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SPEECHES and ADDRESSES 



DELIVERED IN THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES, 
AND ON SEVERAL PUBLIC OCCASIONS, 



HENRY WINTER DAVIS, 



OF MARYLAND. 



PRECEDED BY A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE, FUBLIC SERVICES, AND CHARACTER 



BEING AN ORATION BY THE HON. J. A. J. CRESSWELL, 

U. 6. SENATOR FROM MARYLAND. 



EWftt) Notes, XntroHuctotB ants Hrplanatorn. 



> 



NEW YORK: 

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 

FRANKLIN SQUARE. 

1867. 



•33% 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred 

and sixty-seven, by 

Harper & Brothers, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York. 



PREFACE. 



The friends of the late Henry Winter Davis have thought it 
due to his memory, and to the remembrance of the public service 
which he fulfilled both in the Congress of the United States and 
before the people of Maryland, especially in behalf of emancipa- 
tion, that all such adequate and proper account of it as could be 
had should be put into some convenient shape, and published, as 
a contribution to the history of the times, as well as constituting a 
suitable record of that service. 

To this end they have collected all the reports and accounts of 
the speeches and addresses delivered by him, and, upon examina- 
tion of them, it was resolved to publish all such as were regularly 
and correctly reported, and which he had gathered or retained, 
precisely as they were printed and as he left them, without cor- 
rection and without omission, except in two instances alone, 
where direct allusion by name was made to persons, which allu- 
sions they believe Mr. Davis would have omitted if he had lived 
to correct these speeches for the press. 

In this collection have also been included such documents and 
reports as were wholly written by him, although the course rec- 
ommended in such papers was not adopted, or the measures or 
men condemned thereby were approved, by the party he support- 
ed or by the people to whom he appealed. For it has not been 
thought admissible to correct any part of the account, nor to with- 
hold any part of it, unless by reason of an insufficient and inade- 
quate report it was plainly no true record of what was said. 

It is to be regretted, of course, that these speeches and docu- 



iy PREFACE. 

ments should not have received final revision by the author's 
hand ; but, in the absence of that, the only proper emendation, it 
has been thought improper to substitute the corrections of any 
other. 

They have gladly used the permission of the Hon. Mr. Cress- 
well to include here, as a sketch of the life and services of Mr. 
Davis, the admirable Oration delivered by him in the hall of the 
LTouse of Representatives on the occasion of -the commemorative 
services held there by the senators and representatives on the 22d 
of February, 1866. 

Short notes have been prefixed or annexed to each speech or 
paper, explanatory of the allusions made in it — recalling contem- 
porary events, or the circumstances under which, and the time at 
which, it was delivered. The intention has been to confine those 
notes to that purpose alone ; and the statements made have been 
verified by a recurrence to the daily record of such events printed 
or made at the time of their occurrence. 



CONTENTS. 



THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OP HENRY WINTER DAVIS. 

An Oration delivered in the Hall of the House of Representatives by Hon. John 
A. J. CresSwell, on the 22d of February, 18G6 .' Page 9 



SPEECHES AND ADDKESSES. 

A PLEA FOR THE COUNTRY AGAINST THE SECTIONS. 
A Speech delivered in the House of Representatives, August 7th, 1S5G 30 

THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE (1S5G) — THE TEACHINGS OF THE LATE ELECTION. 
A Speech delivered in the House of Representatives, January 6th, 1857 G3 

, AGAINST THE LECOMPTON FRAUDS. 
A Speech delivered in the House of Representatives, March 30th, 1858 83 

REMARKS AT THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE EASTERN FEMALE HIGH SCHOOL 

OF BALTIMORE. 

An Address delivered in Baltimore, Md., November 16, 1858 104 

THE REOPENING OF THE SLAVE-TRADE. 
An Article written for a Daily Journal in August, 1859 115 

THE QUESTION IN THE TERRITORIES. — UNION OF ALL OPPOSED TO THE DE- 
MOCRACY. 

An Article addressed to the Editor of the N. Y. Tribune in November, 1859... 1 19 

ON THE RESOLUTIONS OF CENSURE BY THE MARYLAND LEGISLATURE ON AC- 
COUNT OF MR. DAVIS'S VOTE FOR MR. SPEAKER PENNINGTON. 

A Speech delivered in the House of Representatives, February 21st, I860 125 

SPEECH BEFORE THE ELECTORS OF THE FOURTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT OF 

MARYLAND. 

A Speech addressed to the Electors of the Fourth Congressional District of 
Maryland during the Presidential Campaign of 18G0 14G 



vi CONTENTS. 

ADDRESS TO THE VOTERS OP THE FOURTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT. 

A Letter addressed to the Constituents of Mr. Davis, January 2d, 18Gl...Page 1S7 

THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE. 
A Speech delivered in the House of Representatives, February 7th, 18G1 199 

ADDRESS TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE ON THE STATE OF THE NATION 
IN THE AUTUMN OF '61. 

A Speech delivered in Baltimore, Md., October 16th, 18G1 222 

CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS SUFFICIENT FOR REPRESSION OF REBELLION. 
A Speech delivered in Brooklyn, N. Y., November, 18G1 258 

CONFISCATION OF THE PROPERTY OF THOSE ENGAGED IN REBELLION. 

Two Letters addressed to the Hon. Justin S. Morrill, a Representative in Con- 
gress from Vermont, June Gth, 1862 292 

THE DEMOCRATIC HUE AND CRY A SHAM.— CONFISCATION AND EMANCIPATION. 
A Speech delivered in Concert Hall, Newark, N. J., October 30th, 1862 303 

NO PEACE BEFORE VICTORY. 
A Speech delivered in Concert Hall, Philadelphia, September 24th, 1863 307 

REMARKS AT THE RECEPTION OF RUSSIAN NAVAL OFFICERS. 
A Response to a Toast, delivered in the Astor House, New York, October 12th, 
1863 338 

NO PEACE TILL AFTER REBEL SUBMISSION. 

An Address delivered in the Cooper Institute, New York, October 9th, 1863.... 341 

CONFISCATION OF REBEL PROPERTY. 

A Speech delivered in the House of Representatives, January 14th, 1864 f 343 

DRAFT AND COMMUTATION.— COLORED TROOPS. 

Extracts from Speeches delivered in the House of Representatives, February 
10th and 11th, 1864 . 351 

FREEDMEN'S BUREAU DISPOSITION TO BE MADE OF FREE NEGROES. 

A Speech delivered in the House of Representatives, January 25th, 1S64 353 

REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT IN THE REBELLIOUS STATES. 
A Speech delivered in the House of Representatives, March 22d, 1864 368 

ON EMANCIPATION IN MARYLAND. 
A Speech delivered in the Maryland Institute, Baltimore, April 1st, 1864 384 



CONTENTS. v ji 

THE EMPIRE OP MEXICO. 

A Speech delivered in the House of Representatives, April 4th, 1864 Page 395 

EXPULSION OP MR, LONG, OF OHIO. 
A Speech delivered in the House of Representatives, April 11th, 1864 397 

THE ENROLLMENT BILL. 
A Speech delivered in the House of Representatives, July 1st, 1864 410 

THE PRESIDENT'S SUPPRESSION OF THE BILL FOR RECONSTRUCTION IN THE 
REBELLIOUS STATES. 

An Address to the People, known as the "Wade-Davis Manifesto," published 
August 8th, 1864 415 

VICTORY THE CONDITION OF SUCCESS. 
A Speech delivered in National Hall, Philadelphia, October 25th, 1864 427 

JOINT RESOLUTION ON MEXICAN AFFAIRS. 
\| A Report and Resolution addressed to the House of Representatives, June, 1864.. 456 

<J FOREIGN POLICY OF THE UNITED STATES IN REGARD TO MEXICAN AFFAIRS. 
A Speech delivered in the House of Representatives, 1864 472 

ADMINISTRATION OF THE NAVY DEPARTMENT.— MONITORS AND ARMORED SHIPS. 

Speeches delivered in the House of Representatives, February 3d and 6th, 1865.. 480 

RECONSTRUCTION OF THE REBEL STATES. 
A Speech delivered in the House of Representatives, February 21st, 1S65 529 

SPEECH ON PROPOSING AN AMENDMENT TO THE MISCELLANEOUS APPROPRIATION 
BILL PROHIBITING THE TRIAL OF CITIZENS BY MILITARY COMMISSIONS. 

The last Speech made by Mr. Davis in the House of Representatives, delivered 
March 2d, 1865, at the close of the Thirty-eighth Congress 538 

LETTER ON RECONSTRUCTION.— UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE. 
A Letter written to a Friend in Washington, dated Baltimore, May 27, 1865... 556 

LESSONS OF THE WAR.— SECURITY FOR THE FUTURE, AND SELF-GOVERNMENT 
BY LAW, WITH LD3ERTY GUARDED BY POWER. 

An Oration delivered in the Hall of the Sanitary Fair at Chicago, 111., July 4th, 
1865 564 

THE NECESSITY OF UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE IN RECONSTRUCTION. 

A Letter addressed to the Editor of the (New York) Nation, October, 1865 585 



THE LIFE AND CHARACTER 



HENRY WINTER DAVIS. 

AN ORATION BY/' 

HON. JOHN A. J. CRESWELL, 

II. S. SUNATOIt FROM MARYLAND. 

ScliuereU m tfjc #}all of tJjc 7i)ousc of lUprcscntntfbcs, 

FEBRUARY 22, 18CG. 



The death of lion. Henry Winter Davis, on the 30th of December, 18C5, for 
many years a distinguished representative of ono of the Baltimore congressional 
districts, created a deep sensation among those who had been associated with him in 
national legislation, and they deemed it fitting to pay to his memory unusual hon- 
ors. They adopted resolutions expressive of their grief, and invited Hon. John A. 
J. Cresswell, a senator of the United States from the State of Maryland, to de- 
liver an oration on his lifo and character in the hall of the House of Representa- 
tives on the 22d of February, a day the recurrence of which ever gives increased 
warmth to patriotic emotions. 

The hall of the House was filled by a distinguished audience to listen to the ora- 
tion. Before eleven o'clock the galleries were crowded in every part. The flags 
above the Speaker's desk were draped in black, and other insignia of mourning were 
exhibited. An excellent portrait of the late Hon. Henry Winter Davis was visi- 
ble through the folds of the national banner above the Speaker's chair. As on the 
occasion of the oration on President Lincoln by Hon. George Bancroft, the 
Marine band occupied the anteroom of the reporter's gallery, and discoursed ap- 
propriate music. 

At twelve o'clock the senators entered, and the judges of the Supreme Court, 
preceded by Chief Justice Chase. Of the cabinet, Secretary Stanton and Secretary 
McCulloch were present. After prayer by the chaplain, the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence was read by Hon. Edward McPiierson, Clerk of the House. After the 
reading of the Declaration, followed by the playing of a dirge by the band, Hon. 
Schuyler Colfax, Speaker of the House of Representatives, introduced the orator 
of the day, Hon. J. A. J. Ceesswell. 



REMARKS 

OF 

HON. SCHUYLER COLFAX, 

SPEAKER OF TUB HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 



Hon. Schuyler Colfax, Speaker of the House of Representatives, 
said : 

Ladies and Gentlemen, — The duty has been devolved upon me of 
introducing to you the friend and fellow-member, here, of Henry "Winter 
Davis, and I shall detain you but a moment from his address, to which 
you will listen with saddened interest. 

The world always appreciates and honors courage: the courage of 
Christianity, which sustained martyrs in the amphitheatre, at the stake, 
and on the rack; the courage of Patriotism, which inspired millions in 
our own land to realize the historic fable of Curtius, and to fdl up with 
their own bodies, if need be, the yawning chasm which imperiled the re- 
public; the courage of Humanity, which is witnessed in the pest-house 
and the hospital, at the death-bed of the homeless and the prison-cell of 
the convict. But there is a courage of Statesmen, besides ; and nobly 
was it illustrated by the statesman whose national services we com- 
memorate to-day. Inflexibly hostile to oppression, whether of slaves 
on American soil or of republicans struggling in Mexico against mo- 
narchical invasion, faithful always to principle and liberty, championing 
always the cause of the downtrodden, fearless as he was eloquent in his 
avowals, he was mourned throughout a continent; and from the Pa- 
tapsco to the Gulf the blessings of those who had been ready to perish 
followed him to his tomb. It is fitting, therefore, though dying a private 
citizen, that the nation should render him such marked and unusual 
honors in this hall, the scene of so many of his intellectual triumphs ; 
and I have great pleasure in introducing to you, as the orator of the day, 
Hon. J. A. J. Cresswell, his colleague in the Thirty-eighth Congress, 
and now senator from the State of Maryland. 



ORATION 

OF 

HON. JOHN A. J. CRESSWELL. 



The Hon. Mr. CkesJwell rose and spoke as follows : 

My Countrymen, — On the 22d day of February, 1732, God gave 
to the world the highest type of humanity in the person of George 
Washington. Combining within himself the better qualities of the 
soldier, sage, statesman, and patriot, alike brave, wise, discreet, and 
incorruptible, the common consent of mankind lias awarded him the 
incomparable title of Father of his Country. Among all nations and 
in every clime, the richest treasures of language have been exhausted 
in the effort to transmit to posterity a faithful record of his deeds. 
For him unfading laurels are secure so long as letters shall survive 
and history shall continue to be the guide and teacher of civilized 
men. The whole human race has become the self-appointed guardian 
of his fame, and the name of Washington will be ever held, over all 
the earth, to be synonymous with the highest perfection attainable 
in public or private life, and coetcrnal with that immortal love to 
which reason and revelation have together toiled to elevate human 
aspirations — the love of liberty restrained and guarded by law. 

But in the presence of the Omnipotent how insignificant is the 
proudest and the noblest of men ! Even Washington, who alone of 
his kind could fill that comprehensive epitome of General Henry 
Lee, so often on our lips, " First in war, first in peace, and first in the 
hearts of his countrymen," was allowed no exemption from the com- 
mon lot of mortals. In the sixty-eighth year of his age he too paid 
the debt of nature. 

The dread announcement of his demise sped over the land like a 
pestilence, bimlening the very air with mourning, and carrying in- 
expressible sorrow to every household and every heart. The course 
of legislation was stopped in mid career to give expression to the 
grief of Congress, and by resolution, approved January G, 1800, the 
22d of February of that year was devoted to national humiliation 



x i v ORATION ON THE LIFE AND CHARACTER 

and lamentation. This is, then, as well a day of sorrow as a day of 
rejoicing. 

More recent calamities also remind us that death is universal king. 
Just ten days ago our great historian pronounced in this hall an im- 
partial judgment upon the earthly career of him who, as savior of 
his country, will be counted as the compeer of Washington. Scarce 
have the orator's lingering tones been mellowed into silence, scarce 
has the glowing page whereon his words were traced lost the im- 
press of his passing hand, yet we are again called into the presence 
of the Inexorable to crown one more illustrious victim with sacrificial 
flowers. Having taken up his lifeless body, as beautiful as the dead 
Absalom, and laid it in the tomb with becoming solemnity, we have 
assembled in the sight of the world to do deserved honor to the 
name and memory of Heney "Winter Davis, a native of Annapolis, 
in the State of Maryland, but always proudly claiming to be no less 
than a citizen of the United States of America. 

We have not convened in obedience to any formal custom, re- 
quiring us to assume an empty show of bereavement, in order that 
we may appear respectful to the departed. We who knew Henry 
Winter Davis are not content to clothe ourselves in the outward 
, garb of grief, and call the semblance of mourning a fitting tribute to 
the gifted orator and statesman, so suddenly snatched from our midst 
in the full glory of his mental and bodily strength. We would do 
more than " bear about the mockery of woe." Prompted by a gen- 
uine affection, we desire to ignore all idle and merely conventional 
ceremonies, and permit our stricken hearts to speak their spontane- 
ous sorrow. 

Here, then, where he sat for eight years as a representative of the 
people ; where friends have trooped about him, and admiring crowds 
have paid homage to his genius ; where grave legislators have yield- 
ed themselves willing captives to his eloquence, and his wise counsel 
has moulded in no small degree the law of a great nation, let us, in 
dealing with what he has left us, verify the saying of Bacon, "Death 
openeth the good fame and extinguished envy." Remembering 
that he was a man of like passions and equally fallible with our- 
selves, let us review his life in a spirit of generous candor, applaud 
what is good, and try to profit by it ; and if we find aught of ill, let 
us, so far as justice and truth will permit, cover it with the veil of 
charity, and bury it out of sight forever. So may our survivors do 
for us. 

The subject of this address was born on the 16th of August, 1817. 

His father, Rev. Henry Lyon Davis, of the Protestant Episcopal 



OF HENRY WINTER DAVIS. xv 

Church, was president of St. John's College at Annapolis, Maryland, 
and rector of St. Ann's parish. He was of imposing person, and great 
dignity and force of character. He was, moreover, a man of genius, 
and of varied and profound learning, eminently versed in mathemat- 
ics and natural sciences, abounding in classical lore, endowed with a 
vast memory, and gifted with a concise, clear, and graceful style ; 
rich and fluent in conversation, but without the least pretension to 
oratory, and wholly incapable of extempore speaking. He was re- 
moved from the presidency of St. John's by a board of Democratic 
trustees because of his Federal politics ; and, years afterward, he 
gave his son his only lesson in politics, at the end of a letter ad- 
dressed to him when at Kcnyon College, in this laconic sentence : 
" My son, beware of the follies of Jacksonisrn." 

His mother was Jane Brown Winter, a woman of elegant accom- 
plishments, and great sweetness of disposition and purity of life. It 
might be truthfully said of her that she was an exemplar for all who 
knew her. She had only two children, Henry Winter, and Jane, 
who married the Rev. Edward Seyle. 

The education of Henry Winter began very early, at home, under 
the care of his aunt, Elizabeth Brown Winter, who entertained the 
most rigid and exacting opinions in regard to the training of chil- 
dren, but who was, withal, a noble woman. He once playfully said, 
" I could read before I was four years old, though much against my 
will." When his father was removed from St. John's, he went to 
Wilmington, Delaware, but some time elapsed before he became set- 
tled there. Meanwhile Henry Winter remained with his aunt, in 
Alexandria, Virginia. He afterward went to Wilmington, and was 
there instructed under his father's supervision. In 1S27 his father 
returned to Maryland, and settled in Anne Arundel County. 

After reaching Anne Arundel, Henry Winter became so much de- 
voted to outdoor life that he gave small promise of scholarly pro- 
ficiency. He affected the sportsman, and became a devoted disciple 
of Nimrod ; accompanied always by one of his father's slaves, he 
roamed the country with a huge old fowling-piece on his shoulder, 
burning powder in abundance, but doing little damage otherwise. 
While here he saw much of slaves and slavery, and what he saw im- 
pressed him profoundly, and laid the foundation for those opinions 
which he so heroically and constantly defended in all his after life. 
Referring to this period, he said, long afterward, " My familiar asso- 
ciation with the slaves while a boy gave me great insight into their 
feelings and views. They spoke with freedom before a boy what 
they would have repressed before a man. They were far from indif- 



xvi ORATION ON THE LIFE AND CHARACTER 

ferent to their condition ; they felt wronged, and sighed for freedom. 
They were attached to my father and loved me, yet they habitually 
spoke of the day Avhen God would deliver them." 

He subsequently went to Alexandria, and was sent to school at 
Howard, near the Theological Seminary, and from Howard he went 
to Kenyon College, in Ohio, in the fall of 1833. 

Kenyon was then in the first year of the presidency of Bishop 
Mcllvaine. It was the centre of vast forests, broken only by occa- 
sional clearings, excepting along the lines of the National Road and 
the Ohio River and its navigable tributaries. In this wilderness of 
nature, but garden of letters, he remained, at first in the grammar- 
school, and then in the college, until the 6th of September, 1837, 
when, at twenty years of age, he took his degree and diploma, deco- 
rated with one of the honorary orations of his class on the great day 
of commencement. His subject was "Scholastic Philosophy." 

At the end of the freshman year a change in the college terms 
gave him a vacation of three months. Instead of spending it in idle- 
ness, as he might have done, and as most boys would have done, he 
availed himself of this interval to pursue and complete the studies of 
the sophomore year, to which he had already given some attention in 
his spare moments. At the opening of the next session he passed 
the examination for the junior class. Fortunately I have his own 
testimony and opinion as to this exploit, and I give them in his own 
language : 

"It was a pretty sharp trial of resolution and dogged diligence, but it saved me 
a year of college, and indurated my powers of study and mental culture into a hab- 
it, and perhaps enabled me to stay long enough to graduate. I do not recommend 
the example to those who are independently situated, for learning must fall like 
the rain in such gentle showers as to sink in if it is to be fruitful ; when poured on 
the richest soil in torrents, it not only -runs off without strengthening vegetation, 
but washes away the soil itself." 

His college life was laborious and successful. The regular studies 
were prosecuted with diligence, and from them he derived great 
profit, not merely in knowledge, but in what is of vastly more ac- 
count, the habit and power of mental labor. These studies were 
wrought into his mind and made part of the intellectual substance 
by the vigorous collisions of the societies in which he delighted. 
For these mimic conflicts he prepared assiduously, not in writing, 
but always with a carefully adduced logical analysis and arrange- 
ment of the thoughts to be developed in the order of argument, with 
a brief note of any quotation, or image, or illustration on the margin 
at the appropriate place. From that brief he spoke. And this was 



OF HENRY WINTER DAVIS. xv ii 

his only method of preparation for all the great conflicts in which 
he took part in after life. He never wrote out his speeches before- 
hand. 

Speaking of his feelings at the end of his college life, he sadly 
said : 

"My father's death had embittered the last days of the year 183G, and left me 
without a counselor. I knew something of books, nothing of men, and I went 
forth like Adam among the wild beasts of the unknown wilderness of the world. 
My father had dedicated me to the ministry, but the day had gone when such dedi- 
cations determined the lives of young men. Theology, as a grave topic of historic 
and metaphysical investigation, I delighted to pursue, but for the ministry I had no 
calling. I would have been idle if I could, for I had no ambition-; but I had no 
fortune, and I could not beg or starve." 

All who were acquainted with 'his temperament can well imagine 
what a gloomy prospect the future presented to him, when its con- 
templation wrung from his stoical taciturnity that touching con- 
fession. 

The truth is, that from the time he entered college he was contin- 
ually cramped for want of money. The negroes ate every thing that 
was produced on the farm in Anne Arundel, a gastronomic feat 
which they could easily accomplish without ever having cause to 
complain of a surfeit. His aunt, herself in limited circumstances, by 
a careful husbandry of her means, managed to keep him at college. 
Kenyon was then a manual-labor institution, and the boys Avere re- 
quired to sweep their own rooms, make their own beds and fires, 
bring their own water, black their own boots, if they ever were 
blacked, and take an occasional turn at grubbing in the fields or 
working on the roads. There was no royal road to learning known 
at Kenyon in those days. Through all this Henry Winter Davis 
passed, bearing himself manfully ; and knowing how heavily he taxed 
the slender purse of his aunt, he denied himself with such rigor that 
he succeeded, incredible as it may appear, in bringing his total ex- 
penses, including boarding and tuition, within the sum of eighty dol- 
lars per annum. 

His father left an estate consisting only of some slaves, which were 
equally apportioned between himself and sister. Frequent applica- 
tions were made to purchase his slaves, but he never could be in- 
duced to sell them, although the proceeds would have enabled him 
to pursue his studies with ease and comfort. He rather sought and 
obtained a tutorship, and for two years he devoted to law and letters 
only the time he could rescue from its drudgery. In a letter written 
in April, 1839, replying to the request of a relative who offered to 

B 



xviii ORATION ON THE LIFE AND CHARACTER 

purchase his slave Sallie, subject to the provisions of his father's will, 
which manumitted her if she would go to Liberia, he said : " But if 
she is under my control" (he did not know that she had been set to 
his share), "I Avill not consent to the sale, though he wishes to pur- 
chase her subject to the will." And so Sallie was not sold, and 
Henry Winter Davis, the tutor, toiled on and waited. He never 
would hold any of his slaves under his authority, never would accept 
a cent of their wages, and tendered each and all of them a deed of 
absolute manumission whenever the law would allow. Tell me, was 
that man sincere in his opposition to slavery? How many of those 
who have since charged him with being selfish and reckless in his 
advocacy of emancipation would have shown equal devotion to prin- 
ciple ? Not one ; not one. Ah ! the man who works and suffers for 
his opinions' sake places his own ftesh and blood in pledge for his in- 
tegrity. 

Notwithstanding his irksome and exacting duties, he kept his eye 
steadily on the University of Virginia, and read without assistance 
a large part of its course. He delighted especially in the pungent 
pages of Tacitus, and the glowing and brilliant, dignified and ele- 
vated epic of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. These 
were favorites which never lost their charm for him. When recent- 
ly on a visit at my house, he stated in conversation that he often ex- 
ercised himself in translating from the former, and in transferring the 
thoughts of the latter into his own language, and he contended that 
the task had dispelled the popular error that Gibbon's style is swol- 
len and declamatory ; for he alleged that every effort at condensation 
had proved a failure, and that, at the end of his labors, the page he 
had attempted to compress had always expanded to the eye when 
relieved of the weighty and stringent fetters in which the gigantic 
genius of Gibbon had bound it. 

About this time — the only period when doubts beset him — he was 
tempted by a yery advantageous offer to settle in Mississippi. He 
determined to accept; but •'some kind "spirit interposed to prevent 
the dispatch of the final letter, and he remained in Alexandria. At 
last his aunt — second mother as she was — sold some land, and dedi- 
cated the proceeds to his legal studies. He arrived at the Univer- 
sity of Virginia in October, 1839. 

From that moment he entered actively and unremittingly on his 
course of intellectual training. While a boy he had become familiar, 
under the guidance of his father, with the classics of Addison, John- 
son, Swift, Cowper, and Pope, and he now plunged into the domain 
of history. He had begun at Kenyon to make flanking forays into 



OF HENRY WINTER DAVIS. XIX 

the fields of historic investigation, which lay so invitingly on each 
side of the regular march of his college course. As he acquired 
more information and confidence, these forays became more exten- 
sive and profitable. It was then the transition period from the shal- 
low though graceful pages of Gillies, Rollin, Russel, and Tytler, and 
the rabbinical agglomerations of Shuckford and Prideaux, to the 
modern school of free, profound, and laborious investigation, which 
has reared immortal monuments to its memory in the works of Hal- 
lam, Macaulay, Grote, Bancroft, Prescott, Motley, Niebuhr, Bunsen, 
Schlosser, Thiers, and their fellows. But of the last-named none ex- 
cept Nicbuhr's History of Rome and Hallam's Middle Ages were 
accessible to him in the backwoods of Ohio. Cousin's Course of the 
History of Modern Philosophy was just glittering in the horizon, 
and Gibbon shone alone as the morning-star of the day of historic 
research, which he had heralded so long. The French Revolution 
he had seen only as presented in Burke's brilliant vituperation and 
Scott's Tory diatribe. A republican picture of the great republican 
revolution, the fountain of all that is now tolerable in Europe, had 
not then been presented on any authentic and comprehensive page. 

Not only these, but all historical works of value which the En- 
glish, French, and German languages can furnish, with an immense 
amount of other intellectual pabulum, were eagerly gathered, con- 
sumed with voracious appetite, and thoroughly digested. Supplied 
at last with the required means, he braced himself for a systematic 
curriculum of law, and pursued it with marked constancy and suc- 
cess. While at the University he also took up the German and 
French languages and mastered them, and he perfected his scholar- 
ship in Latin and Greek. Until his death he read all these lan- 
guages with great facility and accuracy, and he always kept his 
Greek Testament lying on his table for easy reference. 

After a thorough course at the University, Mr. Davis entered 
upon the practice of the law in Alexandria, Virginia. He began his 
profession without much to cheer him ; but he was not the man to 
abandon a pursuit for lack of courage. His ability and industry at- 
tracted attention, and before long he had acquired a respectable prac- 
tice, which thenceforth protected him from all annoyances of a pecu- 
niary nature. He toiled with unwearied assiduity, never appearing 
in the trial of a cause without the most elaborate and exhaustive 
preparation, and soon became known to his professional brethren as 
a valuable ally and a formidable foe. His natural aptitude for pub- 
lic affairs made itself manifest in due time, and some articles which 
he prepared on municipal and state politics gave him great reputa- 



XX 



ORATION ON THE LIFE AND CHARACTER 



tion. He also published a series of newspaper essays, -wherein he 
dared to question the divinity of slavery ; and these, though at the 
time thought to be not beyond the limits of free discussion, were 
cited against him long after as evidence that he was a heretic in pro- 
slavery Virginia and Maryland. 

On the 30th of October, 1845, he married Miss Constance T. Gai*- 
diner, daughter of William C. Gardiner, Esq., a most accomplished 
and charming young lacty, as beautiful and as fragile as a flower. 
She lived to gladden his heart for but a few years, and then, 

" Like a lily drooping, 
She bowed her head and died." 

In 1850 he came to Baltimore, and immediately a high position, 
professional, social, and political, was awarded him. His forensic ef 
forts at once commanded attention and enforced respect. The young 
men of most ability and promise gathered about him, and made him 
the centre of their chosen circle. He became a prominent member 
of the "Whig party, and was every where known as the brilliant ora- 
tor and successful controvertist of the Scott campaign of 1852. The 
Whig party, worn out by its many gallant but unsuccessful battles, 
was ultimately gathered to its fathers, and Mr. Davis led off in the 
American movement. He was elected successively to the Thirty- 
fourth, Thirty-fifth, and Thirty-sixth Congresses by the American 
party from the fourth district of Maryland. He supported with 
great ability and zeal Mr. Fillmore for the Presidency in 185G, and 
in 1S60 accepted John Bell as the candidate of his party, though he 
clearly divined and plainly announced that the great battle was real- 
ly between Abraham Lincoln, as the representative of the national 
sentiment on the one hand, and secession and disunion, in all their 
shades and phases, on the other. To his seat in the Thirty-eighth 
Congress he was elected by the Unconditional Union party. 

Since the adjournment of the Thirty-eighth Congress he had been 
profoundly concerned in the momentous public questions now press- 
ing for adjustment, and he did not fail, on several fitting occasions, 
to give his views at length to the public. Nevertheless, he frequent- 
ly alluded to his earnest desire to retreat for a while from the per- 
plexing annoyances of public life. He had determined upon a long 
visit to Europe in the coming spring, and had almost concluded the 
purchase of a delightful country-seat, where he hoped to recruit his 
weary brain for years to come from the exhaustless riches of nature. 
When the Thirty-ninth Congress met, and he read of his old com- 
panions in the work of legislation again gathering in their halls and 
committee-rooms, I think, for at least a day or two, he felt a longing 



OF HENRY WINTER DAVIS. XXI 

to be among them. During the second week of the session he again 
entered this hall, but only as a spectator. The greeting he received 
— so general, spontaneous, and cordial — from gentlemen on both 
sides of the House, touched his heart most sensibly. The crowd that 
gathered about him was so great that the party was obliged to retire 
to one of the larger anterooms for fear of interrupting the public 
business. A delightful interview among old friends was the reward. 
He was charmed with his reception, and mentioned it to me with in- 
tense satisfaction. Little did you, gentlemen, then think that be- 
tween you and a beloved friend the curtain that shrouds eternity 
was so soon to be interposed. His sickness was of about a week's 
duration. Until the morning of the day preceding his death his 
friends never doubted his recovery. Later in the day very unfavor- 
able symptoms appeared, and all then realized his danger. In the 
evening his wife spoke to him of a visit, for one day, which he had 
projected, to his old friend Mrs. S. F. Du Pont, when he replied, in 
the last words he ever uttered, " It shows the folly of making plans 
even for a day." lie continued to fail rapidly in strength until two 
o'clock in the afternoon of Saturday, the 30th of December, when 
Henry Winter Davis, in the forty-ninth year of his age, appeared 
before his God. His death confirmed the opinion of Sir Thomas 
Browne, who declared, "Marshaling all the horrors of death, and 
contemplating the extremities thereof, I find not any thing therein 
able to daunt the courage of a man, much less a icell-resolvecl Chris- 
tian.'''' He passed away so quietly that no one knew the moment of 
his departure. His was 

"A death-like sleep, 
A gentle wafting to immortal life." 

Mr. Davis left a widow, Mrs. Nancy Davis, a daughter of John B. 
Morris, Esq., of Baltimore, and two little girls, who were the idols of 
his heart. He was married a second time on the 2Gth of January, 
1857. His nearest surviving collateral relation is the Hon. David 
Davis, associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, 
who is his only cousin — germau. To all these afflicted hearts may 
God be most gracious. 

Thus has the country lost one of the most able, eloquent, and fear- 
less of its defenders. Called from this life at an age when most men 
are just beginning to command the respect and confidence of their 
fellows, he has left, nevertheless, a fame as wide as our vast country. 
He died nineteen years younger than Washington, and eight years 
younger than Lincoln. At forty-eight years of age Washington had 
not seen the glories of Yorktown even in a vision, nor had Lincoln 



xxii ORATION ON THE LIFE AND CHARACTER 

dreamed of the presidential chair, and if they had died at that age 
they would have been comparatively unknown in history. Doubt- 
less God would have raised up other leaders, if they had been -want- 
ing, to conduct the great American column, which he has chosen to 
be the body-guard of human rights and hopes, onward among the 
nations and the centuries; but in that event the 12th and 22d days 
of February would not be, as they now are, held sacred in our cal- 
endar. 

Mr. Davis had gathered into his house the literary treasures of 
four languages, and had reveled in spirit with the wise men t)f the 
ages, lie had conned his books as jealously as a miner peering for 
gold, and had not left a panful of earth unwashed. He had collected 
the purest ore of truth and the richest gems of thought until he was 
able to crown himself with knowledge. Blessed with a felicitous 
power of analysis and a prodigious memory, he ransacked history, 
ancient and modern, sacred and profane ; science, pure, empirical, 
and metaphysical ; the arts, mechanical and liberal ; the professions, 
law, divinity, and medicine; poetry and the miscellanies of litera- 
ture; and in all these great departments of human lore he moved as 
easily as most men do in their particular province. His habit was 
not only to read, but to reread the best of his books frequently, and 
he was continually supplying himself with better editions of his fa- 
vorites. In current, playful conversation with friends he quoted 
right and left, in brief and at length, from the classics, ancient and 
modern, and from the drama, tragic and comic. In his speeches, on 
the contrary, he quoted but little, and only when he seemed to run 
upon a thought already expressed by some one else with singular 
force and appositeness. lie was the best scholar I ever met for his 
years and active life, and was surpassed by very few, excepting mere 
book-worms. He has for many years been engaged in collecting ex- 
tracts from newspapers, containing the leading facts and public doc- 
uments of the day, but he never commonplaced from books. His 
thesaurus was his head. 

I have but little personal knowledge of Mr. Davis as a lawyer. 
It was never my good fortune to be' associated with him in the trial 
of a cause, nor have I ever been present when he was so engaged. 
But at the time of his death he tilled a high position at the bar, and 
was chosen to lead against the most distinguished of his brethren. 
On public and constitutional questions, as distinguished from those 
involving only private rights, he Avas a host, and in the argument of 
the cases which grew out of the adoption of the new Constitution of 
Maryland he won golden laurels, and drew extraordinary encomiums 



OF HENRY WINTER DAVIS. xxiii 

even from his opponents in that angry litigation. He was thorough- 
ly read in the decisions of the federal courts, and especially in those 
declaring and defining constitutional principles. 

Possessed of a mind of remarkable power, scope, and activity ; 
with an immense fund of precious information, ready to respond to 
any call he might make upon it, however sudden ; wielding a system 
of logic formed in the severest school, and tried by long practice ; 
gifted with a rare command of language and an eloquence wellnigh 
superhuman, and withal graced with manners the most accomplished 
and refined, and a person unusually handsome, graceful, and attract- 
ive, Mr. Davis entered public life with almost unparalleled personal 
advantages. Having boldly presented himself before the most rigor- 
ous tribunal in the world, he proved himself worthy of its favor and 
attention. He soon rose to the front rank of debaters, and when- 
ever he addressed the House all sides gave him a delighted audience. 

I shall not attempt a review of the topics discussed in the Thirty- 
fourth and Thirty-fifth Congresses. The day was fast coming when 
contests for the speakership and battles over appropriation bills — ay, 
even the fierce struggle over Kansas, Avould sink into insignificance, 
and Mr. Davis, with that political prescience for which he was al- 
ways remarkable, seemed to discern the first sign of the coming 
storm. The winds had been long sown, and now the whirlwind was 
to be reaped. The Thirty-sixth Congress, which had opened so in- 
auspiciously, and which his vote had saved from becoming a perpetu- 
ated bedlam, met for its second session on the 3d of December, 18G0, 
with the clouds of civil war fast settling down upon the nation. In 
the hope that war might yet be averted, on the fourth day of the 
session the celebrated committee of thirty-three was raised, with the 
lamented Corwin, of Ohio, as chairman, and Mr. Davis as the mem- 
ber from Maryland. When the committee reported, Mr. Davis sus- 
tained the majority report in an able speech, in which, after urging 
every argument in favor of the report, he boldly proclaimed his own 
views, and the duties of his state and country. In his speech of 7th 
February, 1861, he said, 

"I do not wish to say one word which will exasperate the already too much in- 
flamed state of the public mind, hut I will say that the Constitution of the United 
States, and the laws made in pursuance thereof, must be enforced; and they who 
stand across the path of that enforcement must either destroy the power of the 
United States, or it will destroy them." 

For such utterances only a small part of the people of his state was 
on that day prepared. Seduced by the wish, they still believed that 
the Union could be preserved by fair and mutual concessions. They 



xxiv ORATION ON THE LIFE AND CHARACTER 

were on their knees praying for peace, ignorant that bloody war had 
already girded. on his sword. His language was then deemed too 
harsh and unconciliatory, and hundreds, I among the number, de- 
nounced him in unmeasured terms. Before the expiration of three 
months events had demonstrated his wisdom and our folly, and other 
paragraphs from that same speech became the fighting creed of the 
Union men of Maryland. He farther said on that occasion : 

"But, sir, there is one state I can speak for, and that is the State of Maryland. 
Confident in the strength of this great government to protect every interest, grateful 
for almost a century of unalloyed blessings, she has fomented no agitation ; she has 
done no act to disturb the public peace ; she has rested in the consciousness that if 
there be wrong, the Congress of the United States will remedy it ; and that none 
exists which revolution would not aggravate. 

"Mr. Speaker, I am here this day to speak, and I say that I do speak, for the 
people of Maryland, who are loyal to the United States ; and that when my judg- 
ment is contested, I appeal to the people for its accuracy, and I am ready to main- 
tain it before them. 

" In Maryland we are dull, and can not comprehend the right of secession. We 
do not recognize the right to make a revolution by a vote. We do not recognize 
the right of Maryland to repeal the Constitution of the United States ; and if any 
Convention there, called by whatever authority, under whatever auspices, under- 
take to inaugurate revolution in Maryland, their authority will be resisted and de- 
fied in arms on the soil of Maryland, in the name and by the authority of the Unit- 
ed States." 

In January, 1SG1, the ensign of the republic, while covering a 
mission of mercy, was fired on by traitors. In February Jefferson 
Davis said, at Stevenson, Alabama, " We will carry war where it is 
easy to advance, where food for the sword and torch await our ar- 
mies in the densely populated cities." In March, the Thirty-sixth 
Congress, after vainly passing conciliatory resolutions by the score — 
among other things recommending the repeal of all personal-liberty 
bills, declaring that there was no authority outside of the states 
where slavery Avas recognized to interfere with slaves or slavery 
therein, and proposing by two-thirds votes of both houses an amend- 
ment of the Constitution prohibiting any future amendment giving 
Congress power over slavery in the states — adjourned amid general 
terror and distress. 

Abraham Lincoln, having passed through the midst of his ene- 
mies, appeared at Washington in due time and delivered his inaugu- 
ral, closing with these memorable words : 

"In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the mo- 
mentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. 

"You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You can 



• OF' HENRY WINTER DAVIS. XXV 

have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the 
most solemn one to ' preserve, protect, and defend' it. 

"I am loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be ene- 
mies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. 

"The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot 
grave to every living hearth and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell 
the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely as they will be, by the bet- 
ter angels of our nature." 

Words which, if human hearts do not harden into stone, through 
the long ages yet to come 

"Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against 
The deep damnation of his taking off." 

The appeal was spurned ; and, in the face of its almost godlike 
gentleness, they who already gloried in their anticipated saturnalia 
of blood inhumanly and falsely stigmatized it as a declaration of Avar. 
The long-patient North, slow to anger, in its agony still cried, " My 
brother — oh, my brother!" It remained for that final, ineradicable 
infamy of Sumter to arouse the nation to arms! At last, to murder 
at one blow the hopes we had nursed so tenderly, they impiously 
dragged in the dust the glorious symbol of our national life and maj- 
esty, heaping dishonor upon it, and, like the sneering devil at the 
Crucifixion, crying out, " Come and deliver thyself!" and then no 
man, with the heart of a man, who loved his country and feared his 
God, dared longer delay to prepare for that great struggle which 
was destined to rock the earth. 

Poor Maryland ! cursed with slavery, doubly cursed with traitors ! 
Mr. Davis had said that Maryland was loyal to the United States, 
and had pledged himself to maintain that position before the people. 
The time soon came for him to redeem his pledge. On the morning 
of the 14th of April the President issued his proclamation calling a 
special session of Congress, which made an extra election necessary 
in Maryland. Before the sun of that day had gone down this card 
was promulgated : 

" To the Voters of the, Fourth Congressional District of Maryland: 
"I hereby announce myself as a candidate for the House of Representatives of 
the 37th Congress of the United States of America, upon the basis of the uncondi- 
tional maintenance of the Union. 

" Should my fellow-citizens of like views manifest their preference for a different 
candidate on that basis, it is not my purpose to embarrass them. 

"H. Winter Davis. 
" April 15, 1861." 

But dark days were coming for Baltimore. A mob, systematical- 
ly organized in complicity with the rebels at Richmond and Harper's 



xxvi ORATION ON THE LIFE AND CHARACTER 

Ferry, seized and kept in subjection an unsuspecting and unarmed 
population from the 19th to the 24th of April. For six days murder 
and treason held joint sway; and at the conclusion of their tragedy 
of horrid barbarities they gave the farce of holding an election for 
members of the House of Delegates. 

To show the spirit that moved Mr. Davis under this ordeal, I cite 
from his letter, written on the 28th, to Hon. William H. Seward, the 
following: 

"I have been trying to collect the persons appointed scattered by the storm, and 
to compel them to take their offices or to decline. 

"I have sought men of undoubted courage and capacity for the places vacated. 

" We must show the secessionists that we are not frightened, but are resolved to 
maintain the government in the exercise of all its functionsjn Maryland. 

"We have organized a guard, who will accompany the officers and hold the pub- 
lic buildings against all the secessionists in Maryland. 

"A great reaction has set in. If we now act promptly, the day is ours and the 
state is safe." 

These matters being adjusted, he immediately took the field for 
Congress on his platform against Mr. Henry May, Conservative Union, 
and in the face of an opposition which few men have dared to en- 
counter, he carried on, unremittingly from that time until the elec- 
tion on the 13th of June, the most brilliant campaign against open 
traitors, doubters, and dodgers, that unrivaled eloquence, courage, 
and activity could achieve. Every where, day and night, in sunshine 
and storm, in the market-houses, at the street corners, and in the 
public halls, his voice rang out clear, loud, and defiant for the " un- 
conditional maintenance" of the Union. He Mas defeated, but he 
sanctified the name of unconditional union in the vocabulary of ev- 
ery true Marylander. He gathered but 6000 votes out of 1 4,000, yet 
the result was a triumph which gave him the real fruits of victory; 
and he exclaimed to a friend, with laudable pride, "With six thou- 
sand of the working-men of Baltimore on my side, won in such a con- 
test, I defy them to take the state out of the Union." Though not 
elected, he never ceased his efforts. With us it was a struggle for 
homes, hearths, and lives. He said at Brooklyn, 

" You see the conflagration from a distance ; it blisters me at my side. You can 
survive the integrity of the nation ; we in Maryland would live on the side of a gulf, 
perpetually tending to plunge into its depths. It is for us life and liberty ; it is for 
you greatness, strength, and prosperity." 

Nothing appalled him ; nothing deterred him. He said at Balti- 
more in 1861, 

"The War Department has been taught by the misfortune at Bull Run, which 



OF HENRY WINTER DAVIS. xxvii 

has broken no power nor any spirit, which bowed no state nor made any heart falter, 
which was felt as a humiliation that has brought forth wisdom." 

lie also said, speaking of the rebels, and foretelling his own fate 
if they succeeded in Maryland, 

" They have inaugurated an era of confiscations, proscriptions, and exiles. Read 
their acts of greedy confiscation, their law of proscriptions by the thousands. Be- 
hold the flying exiles from the unfriendly soil of Virginia, Tennessee, and Mis- 
souri." 

And so he worked on, never abating one jot of his uncompromis- 
ing devotion to the Union, like a second Peter the Hermit, preaching 
a cause, as he believed, truly represented by insignia as sacred as the 
Cross, and for which no sacrifice, not even death, was too great. 

But his crowning glory was his leadership of the emancipation 
movement. The rebels, notwithstanding "My Maryland's" bloody 
welcome at South Mountain and Antietam, claimed that she must 
belong to their confederacy because of the homogeneousness of her 
institutions. They contended that the fetters of slavery formed a 
chain that stretched across the Potomac, and held in bondage not 
only 87,000 slaves, but 600,000 white people also. Their constant 
theme was " the deliverance" of Maryland. We resolved to break 
that last tie, and to take position unalterably on the side of the Union 
and freedom, and thus to deal the final blow to the cause and sup- 
port of rebellion. We organized our little band, almost ridiculous 
from its want of numbers, early in 1863. A Sibley tent would have 
held our whole army. Our enemies laughed us to scorn, and the 
politicians would not accept our help on any terms, but denied us as 
earnestly as Peter denied his Lord. Mr. Davis was our acknowl- 
edged leader, and it was in the heat and fury of the contest which 
followed that our hearts were welded into permanent friendship. 
He was the platform maker, and he announced it in a few words: 

"A hearty support of the entire policy of the national administration, including 
immediate emancipation by constitutional means." 

It was very short, but it covered all the ground. The campaign 
opened by the publication of an address, written by Mr. Davis, to 
the people of Maryland, which, I venture to say, is unsurpassed by 
any state paper published in this age of able state papers for the 
warmth and vigor of its diction, and the lucidity and conclusiveness 
of its argumentation. It is a pamphlet of twenty pages, glowing 
throughout with the unmistakable marks of his genius and patriot- 
ism, and closing with these words of stirring cheer : 

"We do not doubt the result, and expect, freed from the trammels which now 
bind her, to see Maryland, at no distant day, rapidly advancing in a course of un- 



xxviii ORATION ON THE LIFE AND CHARACTER 

examplcd prosperity with her sister free, states of the undivided and indivisible re- 
public." 

Mr. Davis was ubiquitous. He was the life and soul of the whole 
contest. He arranged the order of battle, dictated the correspond- 
ence, wrote the important articles for the newspapers, and addressed 
all the concerted meetings. In short, neither his voice nor his pen 
rested in all the time of our travail. He would have no compromise, 
but rejected all overtures of the enemy short of unconditional surren- 
der. On the Eastern Shore he spoke with irresistible power at Elk- 
ton, Easton, Salisbury, and Snow Hill, at each of the three last-named 
towns with a crowd of wondering "American citizens of African de- 
scent" listening to him from afar, and looking upon him as if they 
believed him to be the seraph Abdiel. His last appointment, in ex- 
treme southern Maryland, he filled on Friday, after which, bidding 
me a cordial God-speed, he descended from the stand, sprang into an 
open wagon awaiting him, traveled eighty miles through a raw night- 
air, reached Cambridge by daylight, and then crossed the Chesa- 
peake, sixty miles, in time to close the campaign with one of his 
ringing speeches in Monument Square, Baltimore, on Saturday night. 
In this, our first contest, Ave were completely victorious. 

But we had yet a weary way before us. The Legislature had then 
to pass a law calling a Convention. That law had to be approved by 
a majority of the people. Members of the Convention had then to 
be elected in all parts of the state, and the Constitution which they 
adopted had to be carried by a majority of the popular vote. Pie 
allowed himself no reprieve from labor until all this had been accom- 
plished. And when the rest of us, worn out by incessant toil, gladly 
sought rest, he went before the Court of Appeals to maintain every 
thing that had been done against all comers, and did so triumphantly. 

Let free Maryland never forget the debt of eternal gratitude she 
owes to Henry Winter Davis. 

If oratory means the power of presenting thoughts by public and 
sustained speech to an audience in the manner best adapted to win a 
favorable decision of the question at issue, then Mr. Davis assuredly 
occupied the highest position as an orator. He always held his hear- 
ers in rapt attention until he closed, and then they lingered about to 
discuss with one another what they had heard. I have seen a pro- 
miscuous assembly, made up of friends and opponents, remain ex- 
posed to a beating rain for two hours rather than forego hearing 
him. Those who had heard him most frequently were always ready 
to make the greatest effort to hear him again. Even his bitterest 
enemies have been known to stand shivering on the street corners 



OF HENRY WINTER DAVIS. xxix 

tor a whole evening, charmed by his marvelous tongue. His stump 
efforts never fell below his high standard. He never condescended 
to a mere attempt to amuse. Pie always spoke to instruct, to con- 
vince, and to persuade through the higher and better avenues to fa- 
vor. I never heard him'deliver a speech that was not worthy of be- 
ing printed and preserved. As a stump orator he was unapproach- 
able, in my estimation, and I say that with a clear recollection of 
having heard, when a boy, that wonder of Yankee birth and South- 
ern development, S. S. Prentiss. » 

Mr. Davis's ripe scholarship promptly tendered to his thought the 
happiest illustrations and the most appropriate forms of expression. 
His brain had become a teeming cornucopia, whence flowed in ex- 
haustless profusion the most beautiful flowers and the most substan- 
tial fruits; and yet he never indulged in excessive ornamentation. 
His taste was most austerely chaste. His style was perspicuous, 
energetic, concise, and, withal, highly elegant. He never loaded his 
sentences with meretricious finery, or high-sounding, supernumerary 
words. When he did use the jewelry of rhetoric, he would quietly 
set a metaphor in his page or throw a comparison into his speech 
which would serve to light up with startling distinctness the colossal 
proportions of his argument. Of humor he had none ; but his wit 
and sarcasm at times would glitter like the brandished cimeter of 
Saladin, and, descending, would cut as keenly. The pathetic he 
never attempted ; but when angered by a malicious assault, his in- 
vective was consuming, and his epithets would wound like pellets of 
lead. Although gallant to the graces of expression, he always com- 
pelled his rhetoric to act as a handmaid to his dialectics. 

Style may sometimes be an exotic ; but when it is, it is sure to 
partake more and more, as years increase, of the peculiarities of the 
soil wherein it is nurtured. But the style of Mr. Davis was indig- 
enous, and strongly marked by his individuality. Although he doubt- 
less admired, and perhaps imitated, the condensation and dignity of 
Gibbon, yet it is certain that he carefully avoided the monotonous 
stateliness and the elaborate and ostentatious art of that most erudite 
historian. I look in vain for his model in the skeptical Gibbon, the 
cynical Belingbroke, or the gorgeous Burke. These w-ere all to him 
intellectual giants, but giants of false belief and practice. Not even 
from Tacitus, upon whom he looked with the greatest favor, could 
he have acquired his burning and impressive diction. 

Henry Winter Davis was a man of faith, and believed in Christ 
and his fellow-man. His heart and mind were both nourished into 
their full dimensions under the fostering influences of our free insti- 



xxx ORATION ON THE LIFE AND CHARACTER 

tutions, so that, being reared a freeman, he thought and spake as 
became a freeman. No other land could have produced such daunt- 
less courage and such heroic devotion to honest conviction in a pub- 
lic man, and even our land has produced but few men of his stamp 
and ability. His implicit faith in God's eternal justice, and his grand 
moral courage, imparted to him his proselyting zeal, and gave him 
that amazing, kindling power which enabled him to light the fires of 
enthusiasm wherever he touched the public mind. 
. To show his power in extemporaneous debate, as well as his de- 
termined patriotism, I will introduce a passage from his speech of 
April 11, 1864, delivered in the House of Representatives. You 
will remember that the end of the rebellion had not then appeared. 
Grant, with his invincible legions, had riot started to execute that 
greatest military movement of modern times, by which, after months 
of bloody persistence, hurling themselves continually against what' 
seemed the frowning front of destiny, they finally drove the enemy 
from his strong-holds, made Fortune herself captive, and, binding her 
to their standards, held her there until the surrender of every rebel 
in arms closed the war amid the exultant plaudits of men and angels. 
Our hopes had not then grown into victory, and we looked forward 
anxiously to the terrible march from the Rappahannock to Rich- 
mond. Thinking that perhaps our army stood appalled before the 
great duty required of it, and that the people might be diverted from 
their purpose to crush the rebellion when they saw that it could only 
be accomplished at the cost of an ocean of human blood, a call was 
made on the floor of the American Congress for a recognition of the 
Southern Confederacy. Speaking for the nation, Mr. Davis said : 

"But, Mr. Speaker, if it be said that a time may come when the question of rec- 
ognizing the Southern Confederacy will have to be answered, I admit it. * * * * 
When the people, exhausted by taxation, weary of sacrifices, drained of blood, be- 
trayed by their rulers, deluded by demagogues into believing that peace is the way 
to union, and submission the path to victory, shall throw down their arms before 
the advancing foe ; when vast chasms across every state shall make it apparent to 
every eye, when too late to remedy it, that division from the South is anarchy at 
the North, and that peace without union is the end of the republic, then the inde- 
pendence of the South will be an accomplished fact, and gentlemen may, without 
treason to the dead republic, rise in this migratory house, wherever it may then be 
in America, and declare themselves for recognizing their masters at the South rather 
than exterminating them. Until that day, in the name of the American nation ; in 
the name of every house in the land where there is one dead for the holy cause ; 
in the name of those who stand before us in the ranks of battle ; in the name of 
the liberry our ancestors have confided to us, I devote to eternal execration the 
name of him who shall propose to destroy this blessed land rather than its enemies. 



OF HENRY WINTER DAVIS. xxx i 

"But, until that time arrive, it is the judgment of the American people there 
shall be no compromise ; that ruin to ourselves or ruin to the Southern rebels are 
the only alternatives. It is only by resolutions of this kind that nations can rise 
above great dangers and overcome them in crises like this. It was only by turning 
France into a camp, resolved that Europe might exterminate but should not subju- 
gate her, that France is the leading empire of Europe to-day. It is by such a re- 
solve that the American people, coercing a reluctant government to draw the sword 
and stake the national existence on the integrity of the republic, are now any thing 
but the fragments of a nation before the world, the scorn and hiss of every petty 
tyrant. It is because the people of the United States, rising to the height of the 
occasion, dedicated this generation to the sword, and pouring out the blood of their 
children as of no account, and vowing before high Heaven that there should be no 
end to this conflict but ruin absolute or absolute triumph, that we now are what we 
are ; that the banner of the republic, still pointing onward, floats proudly in the 
face of the enemy ; that vast regions are reduced to obedience to the laws, and that 
a great host in armed array now press with steady step into the dark regions of the 
rebellion. It is only by the earnest and abiding resolution of the people that, what- 
ever shall be our fate, it shall be grand as the American nation, worthy of that re- 
public which first trod the path of empire, and made no peace but under the banners 
of victory, that the American people will survive in history. And that will save us. 
We shall succeed, and not fail. I have an abiding confidence in the firmness, the 
patience, the endurance of the American people ; and, having vowed to stand in 
history on the great resolve to accept of nothing but victory or ruin, victory is ours. 
And if with such heroic resolve we fall, we fall with honor, and transmit the name 
of liberty, committed to our keeping, untarnished, to go down to future generations. 
The historian of our decline and fall, contemplating the ruins of the last great re- 
public, and drawing from its fate lessons of wisdom on the waywardness of men, 
shall drop a tear as he records with sorrow the vain heroism of that people who 
dedicated and sacrificed themselves to the cause of freedom, and by their example 
will keep alive her worship in the hearts of men till happier generations shall learn 
to walk in her paths. Yes, sir, if we must fall, let our last hours be stained by no 
weakness. If we must fall, let us stand amid the crash of the falling republic and 
be buried in its ruins, so that history may take note that men lived in the middle 
of the nineteenth century worthy of a better fate, but chastised by God for the sins 
of their forefathers. Let the ruins of the republic remain to testify to the latest 
generations our greatness and our heroism. And let Liberty, crownless and child- 
less, sit upon these ruins, crying aloud in a sad wail to the nations of the world, 
' I nursed and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me.' " 

Mr. Davis's most striking characteristics were his devotion to 
principle and his indomitable courage. There never was a moment 
when he could be truthfully charged with trimming or insincerity. 
His views were always clearly avowed and fearlessly maintained. 
He hated slavery, and he did not attempt to conceal it. He remem- 
bered the lessons of his youth, and his heart rebelled against the in- 
justice of the system. His antipathy was deeply grounded in his 



xxxil ORATION ON THE LIFE AND CHARACTER 

convictions, and he could not be dissuaded, nor frightened, nor driven 
from expressing it. 

He was not a great captain nor a mighty ruler ; he was only one 
of the people, but, nevertheless, a hero. Born under the flag of a 
nation which claimed for its cardinal principle of government that 
all men are created free, yet held in abject slavery four millions of 
human beings ; which erected altars to the living God, yet denied to 
creatures formed in the image of God, and charged with the custody 
of immortal souls, the common rights of humanity, he declared that 
the hateful inconsistency should cease to defile the prayers of Chris- 
tians and stultify the advocates of freedom. No dreamer was he, 
no mere theorist, but a worker, and a strong one, who did well the 
work committed to him. He entered upon his self-imposed task 
when surrounded by slaves and slave-owners. He stood face to face 
with the iniquitous superstition, and to their teeth defied its wor- 
shipers. To make proselytes he had to conquer prejudices, correct 
traditions, elevate duty above interest, and induce men who had 
been the propagandists of slavery to become its destroyers. Think 
you his work was easy? Count the long years of his unequal strife; 
gather from the winds, which scattered them, the curses of his foes; 
sutler under all the annoyances and insults which malice and false- 
hood can invent, and you will then understand how much of heart 
and hope, of courage and self-relying zeal, were required to make 
him what he was, and to qualify him to do what he did. And what 
did he? When the rough hand of war had stripped off the pretexts 
which enveloped the rebellion, and it became evident that slavery 
had struck at the life of the republic, unmindful of consequences to 
himself, he, among the first, arraigned the real traitor and demanded 
the penalty of death. The denunciations that fell upon him like a 
cloud wrapped him in a mantle of honor, and more truthfully than 
the great Koman orator he could have exclaimed, '■'•Ego hoc animo 
semper fid, ut invidiam virtute partam, gloriam non invidia pu- 
tarem." 

This man, so stern and inflexible in the execution of a purpose, so 
rigorous of his demands of other men in behalf of a principle, so in- 
different to preferment and all base objects of pursuit, had a monitor 
to whom he always gave an open ear and a prompt assent. It was 
no demon like that which attended Socrates, no witch like that in- 
voked by Saul, no fiend like that to which Faust resigned himself. 
A vision of light, and life, and beauty flitted ever palpably before 
him, and wooed him to the perpetual service of the good and true. 
The memory of a pious and beloved mother permeated his whole 



OF HENRY WINTER DAVIS. XXxiii 

moral being, and kept warm within him the tenderest affection. 
Hear how he wrote of her: 

" My mother was a lady of graceful and simple manners, fair complexion, blue 
eyes, and auburn hair, with a rich and exquisite voice, that still thrills my memory 
with the echo of its vanished music. She was highly educated for her day, when 
Annapolis was the focus of intellect and fashion for Maryland, and its fruits shone 
through her conversation, and colored and completed her natural eloquence, which 
my father used to say would have made her an orator, if it had not been thrown 
away on a woman. She was the incarnation of all that is Christian in life and 
hope, in charity and thought, ready for every good work, herself the example of all 
she taught." 

It was the force of her precept and example that formed the man, 
and supplied him with his shield and buckler. His private life was 
spotless. His habits were regular and abstemious, and his practice 
in close conformity with the Episcopal Church, of which he was a 
member. He invariably attended divine service on Sunday, and 
confined himself for the remainder of the day to a course of religious 
reading. If from his father he drew a courage and a fierce determ- 
ination before which his enemies fled in confusion, from his mother 
he inherited those milder qualities that won for him friends as true 
and devoted as man ever possessed. Some have said he was hard 
and dictatorial. They had seen him only when a high resolve had 
fired his breast, and when the gleam of battle had lighted his counte- 
nance. His friends saw deeper, and knew that beneath the exterior 
he assumed in his struggles with the world there beat a heart as 
pure and unsullied, as confiding and as gentle, as ever sanctified the 
domestic circle, or made loved ones happy. His heart reminded me 
of a spring among the hills of the Susquehanna to which I often re- 
sorted in my youth ; around a part of it Ave boys had built a stone 
wall to protect it from outrage, while on the side next home we Jeft 
open a path, easily traveled by familiar feet, and leading straight to 
the sweet and perennial waters within. 

He lived to hear the salvos that announced, after more than two 
centuries of bondage, the redemption of his native state. He lived 
to vote for that grand act of enfranchisement that wiped from the 
escutcheon of the nation the leprous stain of slavery, and to know 
that the Constitution of the United States no longer recognized and 
protected property in man. He lived to witness the triumph of his 
country in its desperate struggle with treason, and to behold all its 
enemies either wanderers, like Cain, over the earth, or suppliants for 
mercy at her feet. He lived to catch the first glimpse of the coming 
glory of that new era of progress that matchless valor had won 

C 



xxxiv OKATION ON THE LIFE AND CHAKACTER 

throusrh the blood and carnaore of a thousand battle-fields. He 
lived, through all the storm of war, to see, at last, America rejuvena- 
ted, rescued from the grasp of despotism, and rise victorious, with 
her garments purified and her brow radio nt with the unsullied light 
of liberty. He lived to greet the return of " meek-eyed peace," and 
then he gently laid his head upon her bosom, and breathed out there 
his noble spirit. 

The sword may rust in its scabbard, and so let it ; but free men, 
with free thought and free speech, will wage unceasing war until 
truth shall be enthroned and sit empress of the world. Would to 
God that he had been spared to complete a life of threescore and ten 
years, for the sake of his country and posterity. When I think of 
the good he would have accomplished had he survived for twenty 
years, I can say, in the language of Fisher Ames, " My heart, pene- 
trated with the remembrance of the man, grows liquid as I speak, 
and I could pour it out like water." 

At the portals of his tomb we may bid farewell to the faithful 
Christian, in the full assurance that a blessed life awaits him beyond 
the grave. Serenely and trustfully he has passed from our sight and 
gone down into the dark waters. 

" So sinks the day-star in the ocean hed, 
And yet anon repairs his drooping head, 
And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore 
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky." 

From this hall, where as scholar, statesman, and orator he shone 
so brightly, he has disappeared forever. Never again will he, an- 
swering to the roll-call from this desk, respond for his country and 
the rights of man. No more shall we hear his fervid eloquence in 
the day of imminent peril, invoking us, who hold the mighty power 
of peace and war, to dedicate ourselves, if need be, to the sword, but 
to accept no end of the conflict save that of absolute triumph for our 
country. He has gone to answer the great roll-call above, where the 
" brazen throat of war" is voiceless in the presence of the Prince of 
Peace. Let us habitually turn to his recorded words, and gather 
wisdom as from the testament of a departed sage ; and since we were 
witnesses of his tireless devotion to the cause of human freedom, let 
us direct that on the monument which loving hearts and willing 
hands will soon erect over his remains, there shall be deeply en- 
graved the figure of a bursting shackle as the emblem of the fixith in 
which he lived and died. 

For the Christian, scholar, statesman, and orator, all good men are 



OF HENRY WINTER DAVIS. XXXV 

mourners ; but what shall I say of that grief which none can share — 
the grief of sincere friendship ? 

Oh, my friend ! comforted by the belief that you, while living, 
deemed me worthy to be your companion, and loaded me with the 
proofs of your esteem, I shall fondly treasure, during my remaining 
years, the recollection of your smile and counsel. Lost to me is the 
strong arm whereon I have so often leaned ; but in that path which 
in time past we trod most joyfully together, I shall continue, as God 
shall give me to see my duty, with unfaltering though perhaps with 
unskillful steps, right onward to the end. 

Admiring his brilliant intellect and varied acquirements, his invin- 
cible courage and unswerving fortitude, glorying in his good works 
and fair renown, but, more than all, loving the ma?i, I shall endeavor 
to assuage the bitterness of grief by applying to him those words of 
proud, though tearful satisfaction, from which the faithful Tacitus 
drew consolation for the loss of that noble Roman whom he delight- 
ed to honor : 

" Quidquid ex Agricola amavimus, quidquid mirati sumus, manet mansuriunque 
est, in animis hominum, in seternitate temporum, fama rerum." 



SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES 



HENRY WINTER DAVIS. 



A PLEA FOR THE COUNTRY AGAINST THE 
SECTIONS. 

Mr. Davis was elected, in November, 1855, by the American party, 
from the fourth district of Maryland, to the Thirty-fourth Congress, and 
commenced his service there on the 3d of December following. 

So soon as the House met began that memorable contest for the elec- 
tion of Speaker, which continued from that day till the 2d of February, 
185G, when, upon the hundred and thirty-third vote (being the fourth 
after the adoption of the plurality rule, on motion of Mr. S. A. Smith, 
of Tennessee), Mr. Banks, of Massachusetts, was declared to be elected. 

Throughout all those votes Mr. Davis steadily refused to support any 
of the candidates named by either the Democratic or Republican par- 
ties, and persistently voted for Mr. Fuller, of Pennsylvania, upon the 
final and decisive roll-call, when his colleagues from Maryland passed 
over to the support of Mr. Aiken, of South Carolina, then the Demo- 
cratic candidate. During that long struggle, the gentlemen named for 
that place were interrogated as to -their political views and opinions, 
and their intentions in regard to the organization of the House. As 
the candidates of the two great parties had declined or evaded the ques- 
tions, a resolution was proposed on the 1 lth of January " that it was the 
duty of all candidates for political position frankly and fully to state 
their opinions upon important political questions involved in their elec- 
tion, and especially when interrogated by the body of electors whose 
votes they are seeking." In giving their votes upon this resolution 
(adopted by one hundred and fifty-five to thirty-eight), many of the mem- 
bers made short statements of their reasons therefor. In so doing, Mr. 
Davis first invited the House to hear him in such manner as to com- 
mand its marked attention, and to confirm among the members the im- 
pression as to his powers which had preceded him there. 

Mr. Davis was named, although this was his first term of service, on 
the Committee of Ways and Means ; and his first speech in the House 
was delivered on the 12th of March, 1856, upon a resolution reported 
from the Committee of Elections, in the contested election case from the 
Territory of Kansas, empowering that committee to send for persons 
and papers. The argument was confined to the points of parliamentary 
practice, due order of proceeding, and to the questions of administration 



40 A PLEA FOR THE COUNTRY 

of political law. It may be found reported in the Congressional Globe, 
vol. xli., p. 227 ; and as it did not refer, except incidentally, to the polit- 
ical condition of the country, it has not been thought proper to be in- 
cluded in this collection. During the same session he also took some 
part in the discussions in regard to the proposed amendment of the Nat- 
uralization Laws (March 25), the Election Bill for the District of Co- 
lumbia, the Deficiency Bill, the bill for the remission of duties on goods 
destroyed (in warehouse) by fire, and the Civil and Legislative Appro- 
priation Bills. 

The three great political parties, American, Democratic, and Repub- 
lican, had now (July, 1856) nominated Mr. Fillmore, Mr. Buchanan, and 
Mr. Fremont as their respective candidates for the Presidency. The 
election was to be held in November. The country was excited to the 
highest degree. In the Southern States threats of revolution and seces- 
sion were openly made ; and secret meetings of the governors of those 
states were held, at which measures were concerted for joint action and 
a separate confederacy in case of the election of Mr. Fremont. The 
Congress was about to rise, after a most protracted and excited session. 
The bitterness and exasperation of party feeling was daily increasing ; 
it had shown itself not only in violent recrimination and abusive lan- 
guage in debate, but in disgraceful scenes of personal violence on the 
floor of the House. The members were anxious to return to their 
homes, and to begin there the work of stirring up anew the passions and 
prejudices of each section for the great contest in November. 

It was when this feeling had nearly reached its height, and under such 
a condition of affairs, that Mr. Davis, in the evening session of the House 
on the 7th of August, 185G (the House being in Committee of the Whole 
on the State of the Union), spoke as follows : 

"Is Philip dead? No, by Jove! but he is sick." Such was 
the chatter of the factious demagogues of Athens, chilled by the 
shadow of the coming Cheronea. 

Will Fillmore decline? "No; but he is too weak to get a 
single state !" say Democrat and Eepublican, shivering before the 
blast of the coming November. 

Mr. Chairman, they consult prophets who prophesy pleasant 
things. Their hopes are the oracles speaking by the inspiration 
of their interests ; and yet, while they trust to the prophecy to 
produce its accomplishment, they confidentially sigh, " Would it 
were bedtime, Hal, and all well!" That bedtime will surely 
come, but whether the couch of victory or the bed of death be 
spread — ah ! that's the question. Sir, a party at brag and bluff is 
a suspicious witness to the goodness of his own hand, and the by- 



AGAINST THE SECTIONS. 41 

standers, I believe, do not usually regard him as a better witness 
' of the badness of his adversary's. 

If Democrat and Eepublican have conspired together to play 
by-bidder at each other's mock auction — to put off on the country 
plated brass for gold — the people will have the sagacity to see 
that, though Liberty be on one side, the image and superscription 
of the Union is not on the other, and the lacking weight will re- 
veal the counterfeit. 

I desire to make this discrimination. I wish to inquire into 
the weight of this style of brag, which has, to my poor under- 
standing, exhausted the resources of opponents. 

Say the Democrats, " Do not vote for Mr. Fillmore, because he 
can not get a single state at the North." Say the Eepublicans, 
" Do not vote for Mr. Fillmore, because he can not get a single 
state at the South." And both are so simple as to suppose, by 
thus excluding him from the regions of their opponents, that they 
have finally dealt with his pretensions. 

Why is it that two parties, as wide apart as the southern and 
northern poles, have conspired together, in this significant and 
novel way, for the purpose of denying to their most dangerous 
opponent strength in the regions where the adversary of each is 
strong? There are two organized parties in this country which 
claim to represent adverse local interests. The Democratic party 
rests itself on its boasted and self-arrogated privilege of support- 
ing and sustaining the peculiar institution of the South. Its 
strength, and its whole strength, consists in its assertion that it 
alone is the defender of Southern rights. It is therefore danger- 
ous to them for any thing to arise within the limits of the South, 
and claim a hearing from the Southern people, which touches 
more nearly the rights of the people, and appeals to the more ele- 
vated and noble sentiments of devotion to the Constitution and 
the Union. The gentlemen of the Eepublican party of the North 
aspire to represent that sentiment which is likewise local and pe- 
culiarly confined to the boundary of the North, and having no. 
power beyond it. They likewise are jealous of the intrusion on 
their domain of any topic of such stirring interest as will call the 
minds of the North away from the contemplation of the perpet- 
ual cry, " Freedom is national, and slavery is sectional ;" " The 
rights of man;" "The oppressions of the South;" "The equality 
of the negro race." 



42 A PLEA FOR THE COUNTRY 

All these minister to the excitement in the North. They are 
subjects in themselves neither interesting nor attractive — not so 
interesting or attractive but that an appeal to the great interests 
of the country, the great fundamental principles of the Constitu- 
tion, to the great danger of the agitation of these topics, may pos- 
sibly reach the ear of the most besotted, and startle the reason of 
those who are still rational, that they whose talk is of negroes, 
and who think that the servants at the altar should live of the 
altar, may find themselves preaching to empty benches. One, 
therefore, and the other, each within his own region, seeks to 
drive out every thing that may sow wheat among his tares. They 
may touch any thing else but these rights of sovereignty ; but 
put forth your hand and touch them in the very body of their 
power, and they arise and curse you to your face. 

The Democrat is jealous of any thing which impeaches the 
high duty of extending the institution, and is impatient of men 
who accept it as an existing institution, to be protected as any 
other industrial interest is to be protected. 

The Eepublican tolerates no man who questions the practical 
honesty of the higher law, and suggests the conscientious duty of 
conformity to the practical enforcement of the Constitution. Both 
cry out " No compromise ;" both execrate all adherence to the 
existing condition of affairs as wisest and best. Each boasts con- 
quests in the future over his antagonist ; each lives, and moves, 
and has its being in an atmosphere confined to its own region ; it 
can not breathe a moment the air on which the other thrives. 
Neither has any representative in the region of its adversary to 
soften their antagonism. They are both strictly sectional parties, 
tending to bring into collision hostile opinions, feelings, and inter- 
ests, concentrated without mixture at the opposite poles of the 
country ; each intensified, like opposite electricities, by the in- 
tensity of the other, and threatening, if brought into contact, an 
explosion that may shake the foundations of the republic. Each 
knows that, unless it can keep' exclusive control of the whole re- 
gion, there is no hope of triumph or even of a collision. 

In this lies at once their strength and their weakness. Unless 
Mr. Buchanan can carry the whole South, and trust — not to party 
discipline, for that has died away, but — to the chance of the bribe 
of high office to persons in the North to make up the deficiency of 
the Southern vote, they have not the most remote prospect of sue- 



AGAINST THE SECTIONS. 43 

ceeding in carrying him to the presidential chair ; and our Be- 
publican friends on the other side, with equal reason, based on 
equally notorious facts, know, if the State of New York is stricken 
from them, they are a powerless minority out of doors, and that 
no nominee of theirs can darken the doors of the White House. 
It is, therefore, not because of their strength, but because of their 
weakness, that the one and the other seek to produce the impres- 
sion which it is possible, and in charity ought to be conceded, 
each believes, but which it is difficult for men who, like myself, 
hold a moderate and middle position, not to regard in a very dif- 
ferent light. It is for this reason that each party, deluded into 
the idea that it is enthroned in the exclusive control of its own 
sectional interest and its own sectional power, attempts the vain 
task of persuading the country that a man like Mr. Fillmore, re- 
splendent with the glories of a great administration, which ap- 
peals to those pervading and national considerations which wake 
responses in the hearts of the people, must be left in the insig- 
nificant minority of a few rational men of the North and the 
South. 

Mr. Chairman, long lists of names have been paraded of new 
converts to Mr. Buchanan. Letters have been spread before the 
public, urging arguments with all the authority of names entitled 
to the profound respect of the House and the country. I know 
in these lists, whether they relate to Maryland or elsewhere, of 
no man who, at the fall election, earnestly supported the Ameri- 
can cause. I see, in most of them, neophytes of Democracy, those 
hardened sinners against its benign rule who were baptized last 
fall, whose tender faith has been duly instructed by the sponsors 
at their baptism, and whose public and formal declaration now is 
nothing but the ceremony of confirmation to the world of their 
earlier conversion. There is nothing in that list which need 
shake the confidence of the American party. There is nothing 
which makes the scale of Mr. Fillmore vacillate for a single in- 
stant in its inclination in the State of Maryland. There is noth- 
ing that in the slightest degree increases the difficulty of repeat- 
ing, with larger majorities and greater eclat, the triumph of the 
past year. But, sir, I rise to test the argument thus supported by 
great names and widespread authority. We are not to Vote for 
Fillmore because a majority at the North are opposed to his wise 
and patriotic administration — so runs the reason; because the 



44 A PLEA FOR THE COUNTRY 

majority of the North are not favorable to compromise and con- 
ciliation — so runs the reason ; because the majority of the North 
regard the time as come when they must get a scourge for the 
South ; because the majority of the North are of that opinion, 
therefore, in this contest, which they superciliously assume is to 
be between the Northern and the Southern candidates, all men 
must desert the candidate who is alone the candidate of the Con- 
stitution and the Union. The argument is hollow and insidious. 
If the majority of the North be such, then the time for voting is past. 
It is no longer a question whether we will vote for Fillmore or 
Buchanan as President of the United States, because the South is 
in a pitiable minority in the electoral college, and every vote cast 
there leaves her where she is, and without the power of self-pro- 
tection. If the hour of madness be come ; if reason be dead in 
her chosen seat ; if the conservative North has ceased to be con- 
servative, and is inspired by the hatred this argument ascribes to 
her people, then we have no election on the 4th of November for 
President of the United States. Mr. Buchanan will be ineligible 
as a foreigner to rule the South. We have passed by the time of 
the election of that man whose name is to close the fasti of that 
illustrious line. 

The people of 1852 divined well that they were choosing the 
Honorius of the republic, and fitted the man to the station. The 
argument proves too much, if it is true. If it is not true, it is 
trash. 

But the argument is put into a different shape, and pointed di- 
rectly at Mr. Fillmore. His merits are made his incapacities. 
His truth to the Union is made the reason why Southern gentle- 
men, for whom he ran the greatest risk against the opinion of his 
own region of country, are to turn against him — desert him, for a 
man who has encountered nothing for them or for the Union. 
The majority of the North are opposed to Mr. Fillmore because 
of his wise and patriotic administration. They will then vote for 
Buchanan because his administration will not be so wise and pa- 
triotic. They are opposed to Fillmore because they are opposed 
to conciliation and compromise. They will vote for Mr. Bu- 
chanan because he and his party have said, " No more compro- 
mise, and no more conciliation." They will not vote for Fill- 
more because they want a scourge for the South. Unwittingly 
the argument pictures the result of that policy which our Demo- 



AGAINST THE SECTIONS. 45 

cratic friends have inaugurated and followed out to its bitter end. 
The majority of the Northern allies of the Democrats are sup- 
posed very likely to vote for Buchanan because he luill be a scourge 
to the South. If that be not the argument, then the argument is 
unmeaning. 

Well, if that be the foundation of the argument, will not gen- 
tlemen who appreciate the force of reasoning cease to use it? 
Will they not give some better reason why Mr. Fillmore can get 
no strength at the North ? 

Will they not say, "Come, let us reason together;" and say 
that Mr. Buchanan better respects the great fundamental princi- 
ple of the Constitution, and not base their argument on the revo- 
lutionary assumption that the majority of the men of the free 
states are run mad against the men of the South ? It is very 
tempting, I know, to Southern Democrats. If the majority of the 
North are madly bent on punishing the South, they will pass 
Mr. Fillmore by, and inflict on it Mr. Buchanan as the more cruel 
scourge. The argument is good, sir ; the fact on which it rests is 
not true. 

Far different is my estimate of my Northern brethren. I am 
not aware of any acts of the North, as they appear upon our 
statute-books, or as executed from the executive chamber, how- 
ever wild may have been the votes occasionally of a majority 
upon this floor, or however dangerous the arguments pressed into 
their support, which in the slightest degree has sullied the honor 
or injured the interest of the South. They have differed upon 
industrial questions, and decided them by party tactics ; they have 
been set one against the other in party manoeuvre, party triumph 
and domination ; but I say that, during the eighty years of the re- 
public, there is no portion of this great land which has reason to 
cast into the teeth of either the North or the South that any great 
right of either section has been trampled down — any great right 
of the Constitution deliberately violated — any fact showing that 
madness rules the majority either at the North or at the South. 

But there is a solemn fact which my Democratic friends ad- 
mit. There is hostility at the North. They adroitly point it at 
the South. They vainly strive to place the /South between themselves 
and the shaft that has already smitten them to the earth. There is 
wrath boiling up at the North, but it is a wrath which boils 
against them. There is a hostility at the North, but it is a hos- 



,±G A PLEA FOR THE COUNTRY 

tility which they have aroused, which has stricken them down, and 
will keep them down. 

I wish to feel the pulse of the North to-night; I wish to sec 
whether there be reason or madness throbbing there ; whether it 
be the rational wrath of men who believe they have been out- 
raged in their dearest rights, or whether it be the madness of 
men who have flashed into fury causelessly. 

Sir, there are a series of great facts which strike us wheresoever 
we turn our eyes. In 1853, the present incumbent of the presi- 
dential chair was elevated on the shields of twenty-seven states, 
and borne to the White House amid the acclamations of an ex- 
ultant people, rejoicing in the advent of an era of peace. Three 
suns have run their course, and now " he is at supper; not where 
he eats, but where he is eaten ; for a certain body of politic worms 
are e'en at him." When he ascended the chair of state, a great 
majority of seventy in this House obsequiously awaited his will. 
The sun had not thrice run his course ere that majority had shriv- 
eled to seventy-four men. Their place knows them no more. 
This side of the House is a charnel-house of dead Democrats. 
The few survivors tread mournfully as they pass it — as a Roman 
might walk over Cannae. "The bloody ghost of the murdered 
Wright" still to the eye of the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. 
Cobb) disputes the stool with his successor of flesh and blood 
(Mr. Fuller); and many other spectres have left untimely graves 
to warn the pale survivors of their fate. 

My honorable friend from South Carolina was early at the scp- 
ulohres of the righteous in New Hampshire, vainly seeking signs 
of the day of the resurrection of the body; but the snow still lay 
on the marble. The crocus of the early spring had not pushed 
itself through the frozen soil, and he returned chanting sadly, 

"A colli, deceitful thing is the snow, 
Though it come on dove-like wing. 

The false snow, 
Tis but rain disguised appears, 
And our hopes nre frozen tears — 

Like the snow." 

Indeed, sir, the resurrection of the Democratic party at the North 
is an event not at all anticipated there. It has sunk from view, 
like water spilled upon the ground, not to be gathered again. 
A stubborn resolution has been manifested at the North. Since 



AGAINST THE SECTIONS. 47 

that great day there has been nothing which shows that my hon- 
orable friends on the Democratic side of the house have a majori- 
ty in one single state north of Mason and Dixon's line. There is 
not one single fact that shows that they can carry a state north 
of Mason and Dixon's line on national politics even on a plurality. 
The account of loss and gain stands as a set-off. If, in .Pennsyl- 
vania, Democrats, and Whigs, and Americans have combined to 
elect a canal commissioner by a plurality only, in Maine Demo- 
crats and liquor-men have united, and carried a local election by 
a plurality. In New Hampshire and Connecticut the Americans 
have carried the local elections by pluralities. If New Jersey has 
given a Democratic majority in a local election, California has 
come to the Americans by a large majority. 

■The faithful fondly hoped that some of these elections indi- 
cated a change of tide. They forgot that Falstaff "parted just 
between twelve and one, e'en at turning of the tide." If there be 
any compunctions of conscience forcing them to cry out, " God ! 
God ! God !" let them beware of those Dame Quicklys who, to 
comfort them, bid them not think of God, and hope there is no 
need to trouble themselves with such thoughts yet; for when the 
parting Falstaff so cried and was so comforted, and had more 
clothes laid on his feet, the comforter, Dame Quickly, knew there 
was but one way; and when she had put her hand into the bed 
and felt his feet, they were cold as any stone; and then she felt 
to his knees, and so upward and upward, and all was cold as any 
stone. 

Sir, the fatal hour has come. Even while I speak the stricken 
field of Iowa brings to them defeat and disaster, crushed hopes 
and cruel disappointment. Their feet arc already cold in the 
North, and we feel upward, and upward, and upward toward their 
head in the South — all is cold as any stone. "Pis vain to ask for 
more clothes on the feet, for their passing bell is already tolling 
that men may pray for the parting soul. But, sir, they arc not 
without consolation. There arc true Bardolphs, who, when told 
of their death, will exclaim, "Would I were with them, whereso- 
ever they be — cither in heaven or in hell." Now, sir, why is all 
this? Wc need no election statistics for the response. They 
were the triumphant and dominant party at the North ere this 
great flood. None so sound, none so unshaken, none so true to 
defend the South through thick and thin, at all hazards and to the 



48 A PLEA FOR THE COUNTRY 

last extremity, as the Democrats of the North. Where are they 
gone ? " Are they asleep, or on a journey, or at a feast?" or have 
they forgotten their duty, or have they become mad? or have 
they played like children, casting one vote for my honorable 
friend and another for their honorable opponents? 

Sir, the American people have been bred in American habits. 
They are not in the habit of capricious and causeless change. I 
mean to speak the cause of that change out loud. It is the repeal 
of the Missouri Compromise, the enactment of the Kansas- Nebraska 
Act, and the outrages in the Territory of Kansas, denied or defended 
by my honorable Democratic friends. They were here warned 
by the honorable senator from Illinois, who reported that meas- 
ure, in his first report against it, of the dangerous consequences, 
and they would not heed the warning. In an evil day for his 
reputation, he allowed himself to be overcome by party and per- 
sonal ambition, and to be deluded by the hopes of party domina- 
tion. He allowed himself to be deluded by the supposition that 
he could bring to the support of that measure the great body of 
Southern men, Whigs and Democrats, and that the temporary ex- 
citement would only raise the froth upon the surface, while the 
depths of the ocean would roll on in their sluggish sleep. Sir, he 
cast a javelin into the cave of iEolus, and all the winds of strife 
have rushed forth across the ocean and cast up a tempest which 
leaves of the Democratic party nothing but scattered and broken 
fragments, cast on the shores for the wreckers to collect, and, as 
they measure the dimensions of mast and spar, to wonder what 
great admiral it was that has gone down in that terrific sea. Sir, 
is not that the reason ? I do not ask gentlemen to tell me whether 
it is an adequate reason. I do not ask gentlemen to say if the 
North is reasonable in its anger. I simply ask gentlemen, upon 
their candor and honor, if that is not the reason of the existing con- 
dition of things? There is no gentleman here whose heart does 
not echo that it is; and I venture little when I say there is 
scarcely one of my Democratic friends who can appreciate the 
position in which it has placed them, who does not from the bot- 
tom of his heart curse the day on which he was so misled. If 
they adhere still to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, it is from necessity, 
and not from choice. My honorable friends, finding themselves 
at the bottom of the water, have, like Cooper's sailor in the West- 
ern lake, seized a root to keep themselves there. It is from ne- 



AGAINST THE SECTIONS. 49 

cessity, and not from choice, that, with a millstone around their 
necks, they march down to the water for a swimming-match with 
light men having floats on. 

Why, sir, what are their apologies — their apologies to the North, 
their apologies to their Democratic friends, whom they have slain, 
murdered, and sent to the land of ghosts, for whose absence my 
friend from Georgia weeps ? The Missouri Compromise, say they, 
was unconstitutional. " But since when ?" say the North to them. 
That docs not rest well, gentlemen, in your mouths, for it was a 
Democratic majority that passed it. It was the great men of the 
Democratic party, and, more than all others, the great Marylander, 
William Pinckney, who proposed, and advocated, and carried that 
great measure of healing in that day. The great argument which 
he addressed to vindicate the sovereignly of a state from the binding 
control of conditions imposed by Congress, is the argument, mis- 
understood, broken into small fragments suitable to the strength 
and stature of those who use them, and misapplied now by gen- 
tlemen to disprove the power of Congress to pass the very Mis- 
souri restriction on a Territory, which he all along advocated at 
the very time of that great argument, and incorporated into the 
very act which is his triumphal monument to the peace which he 
conquered and perpetuated by it ; and Mr. Monroe, their President, 
signed it — signed it, not hastity, but after consulting his cabinet, 
in which was Mr. Calhoun, on the precise question of constitu- 
tionality. Is that long ago? Has wisdom arisen in a later gen- 
eration ? Have new lights been discovered in the Constitution ? 
Have judicial decisions cleared away the difficulty? 

It was in 1845 when the great Democratic measure was passed 
by which Texas was annexed to this Union; and my honorable 
friends, or their predecessors, then in a majority in both branches 
of Congress, passed the Texas resolution, which enacted the very 
thing against which Pinckney directed the argument which they. 
now make the arsenal for weapons to assail what he advocated. 
They cast their votes for it, and President Tyler on the 3d of 
March signed it. " Oh, but Tyler was not a Democrat." Yes, 
but he was, by conversion, or perversion, or treachery, or deser- 
tion ; he was by acceptance and adoption ; he was by his cabinet 
and his administration ; he was doubly so by the presence and 
counsel of Calhoun, the incarnation of the very idea of Southern 
strict construction ; and it is understood that the resolutions came 

D 



50 A PLEA FOR THE COUNTRY 

down from the secretary of state, who was Mr. Calhoun — that it 
was his influence which dispatched the resolutions to Texas for 
acceptance on the last day of President Tyler's term ; and Mr. 
Polk, though on the spot, did not recall them. 

That resolution declares that all the territory south of 36° 
30', whenever Texas should be divided, should come into the 
Union, with or without slavery, as the states may determine, and 
that in such state or states (I ask gentlemen to bear the word state 
in mind) — in those states which shall be formed out of the Texan 
territory as lies north of 36° 30' — in those states (I wish the word 
to burn itself into their seared consciences; it is the thing which 
was in issue in the Missouri struggle ; it was the only thing which 
was there disputed ; it is the thing which was decided in the Mis- 
souri controversy in favor of the South to be an unconstitutional 
limitation on the sovereign equality of the states) — in those states 
which shall be formed of the territory north of that line, slavery 
and involuntary servitude shall he prohibited; and James Buchanan 
was one of the Democratic majority who advocated and passed it. 

Time rolled on, and another Territory was to be organized. 
Again, with that remarkable luck which has followed them — 
which has misled them to their deep undoing — they had the ma- 
jority in this hall ; they had a majority in both branches of the 
councils of the nation when the Territory of Oregon was to be or- 
ganized ; and again that majority adopted that restriction — word 
for word — the ordinance of 1787. Again a Democratic Presi- 
dent, Mr. Polk, signed it, and not merely so signed, but with a 
farther declaration, not that he expected this to he the last of it — 
not merely that slavery was there impossible or improbable, but 
on the expectation that it would he again p>assed by that or another 
Congress, adopted, and incorporated into the acts for the settlement of 
the Mexican conquests ! 

I neither affirm the correctness or the incorrectness of this view. 
I simply urge the fact which Northern Democrats pleaded against 
the Southern Democrats. 

But, said my honorable friends upon the Democratic side of this 
hall to their friends from the North — for there is where the defec- 
. tion arose ; there is where the strength of the Eepublican party 
comes from — out of their own side came that portentous creation 
whence comes this sin and all our woe into our happy world. 
" We say that we have reversed all that, and those laws and com- 



AGAINST THE SECTIONS. 51 

promises are void by reason of being inconsistent with the compro- 
mise measures of 1850. Those measures have repealed it." "Ah ! 
but," said their Northern Democratic friends, continuing their re- 
monstrance, " the law which organized the boundary of Texas 
declared in so many words that nothing therein contained should 
be construed to repeal or modify any thing contained in that very 
clause of the Texas resolutions." 

These Northern Democrats still farther mercilessly press their 
Democratic brethren, as if to leave my honorable friends on my 
left no escape from the most awkward of dilemmas. If it be true 
that the principle of popular sovereignty was settled by the com- 
promise measures of 1850, how came it to be omitted in the legis- 
lation of 1853, since the acts of 1850 were enacted ? The Con- 
gress of 1853, with a great Democratic majority, organized the 
Territory of Washington out of a territory over which the or- 
dinance of 1787 had been by them in 1848 extended ; and that 
Congress, in the year of grace 1853, and of the era of the new dis- 
pensation of the 3d, not merely failed to remove that restriction, 
but declared that the laws of Oregon should be enforced in the 
Territory of Washington, which laics included slavery by special 
enactment, in flagrant conflict with the principles which they now 
declare to have been the very vital principle embodied in and 
pervading the acts of 1850. You know as well as we do that 
these compromise measures of 1850 have always been regarded 
and treated as a finality — the end of controversy ; that this last 
compromise, this great compromise of 1850, was settled on the 
basis of all the preceding compromises. 

On the assumption and the concession, as stated by Mr. Web- 
ster, that every foot of territory in the United States was finally 
settled by laws irrepealable, and that it was only on that suppo- 
sition that the laws of 1850 became laws at all, only last session 
you passed a bill creating a government over all the territory 
now embraced in the Kansas and Nebraska Act, without opposi- 
tion, merely by common consent ; and no man of any party dis- 
covered, or, if he had discovered, revealed, still less attempted to 
declare the novel dogma of a latent principle, not even expressed 
in an act, being effectual to annul another law enacted on another 
principle. From argument they passed to entreaty and pathetic 
appeal. These thirty years we have lived under this law ; it has 
injured no man. No Southern state protested against its enact- 



a n v\ FOB tSE COUNTS! 

.: none in L850 demanded its repeal] many Southern men 

its < \ . the Pacific; no Southern state now do- 

ids it : bo tern] tates the popular mind which its repeal 

tal necessity compels the statesman, in 

i tread this ontrod path. You 

:-.-.\ your object is not a now slave state; then lei it be as it is. 

5 . • .. . . Northern tide of emigration will insure its freedom, 

. why do the j set of repealing a '..o\ which chai 

\v..\ disturb the peace of the country by this wound 
Northern brethren? Di 
the Abolitionists The*j ore et er 
the on s] [ L860, We stood by 

,1 . a uo^ ? 
Well, sir. this bill passed,] come bo the d le s< [uel 

i 
\ sas. The executive, ibined fat 

N IS ve been doublj careful to have 

■ i the Nov:': or South who was far above 

.. ,o q pri> ate, personal, and pecuniary consid 

.-.-. -■ tab d s ■ 3 friend £ 

. w in my eye, The] should.] cenaman 

. nen a < 
and hone! be moved by promises, They should 

...\. .. . with military expert* 

agh to n: b battalion in the field — whose he) d not 

Ld h«\ e said to all invaders 
s or maraud* \ 

would have seen that : 

i of stan ery was 
i ... .'. and sun, and a truncheon swi 

.-.-. the sound of my \ ... 
would have cut offtheir i ad rather than 

ow of a '. dered to 

eked in* 
feeder's ........ j was deride 

eluded: men who would I ave I itten < at their I 

i .- fess " - i ared by Gh Reeder u Presi 

Ld have held . b the 

posed foreign m 



AGAINST THE SECTIONS. 53 

: a faithful but obnoxious instrument out of the way, to avoid 
the scandal of a public dismissal, and the greater scandal of a con- 
fession of blunders worse than crimes, and weakness worse than 
wickedness. 

If there were no such men within the party, it is unfit to guide 
the destinies of the country ; and if there were, then are they 
thrice unworthy to hold a power they have so grossly abused. 
Sir, that scene in the executive mansion — the proconsul of the 
President narrating that he let the life-blood of the province he 
ruled run unavenged and unstanched, the very flowers of her 
franchises be trampled down at the sacred ballot-box, marauders 
from either pole run a muck over her peaceful population, him- 
self buried to the eyes and ears in private speculations in public 
lands over which he ruled of questionable legality and of unques- 
tionable evil example, and deaf to the cry of helpless agony that 
rang through his domain, content to leave his people to their en- 
emies, if the protector and the President could agree on the color 
to be put on the scandal and adjust the division of the responsi- 
bility, confessing these things to the President of the republic, 
and that President driving a bargain for a foreign mission instead 
of instant and ignominious expulsion from office, and the negotia- 
tion failing, dismissing him gently for illegal speculation, silent as 
the tomb to the civil war that he allowed to rage, the outraged 
law he failed to avenge, the rights of suffrage violated with im- 
punity, and the yoke of a legislation born in violence and fraud 
by his judgment fastened on the necks of American freemen — 
these things, established by a vast mass of resistless testimony, 
form a new and melancholy chapter in the history of the republic. 

Sir, the party whose policy, however well intended, has given 
occasion to stain the American name with civil blood by the re- 
peal of the Missouri Compromise, is not likely to stand well with 
the men of the North, whose brethren have been the sufferers. 
Their denial of the outrages, their extenuations, their apologies, 
day after day, in this House, till the stupendous mass of the com- 
mittee's evidence overwhelmed them, and their cavils at the evi- 
dence — to my judgment unimpeached, and, if so, of crushing 
weight — scarcely tends to improve the odor of the Democratic 
party in the Northern nostrils. That is my opinion of the result 
of the Kansas investigation : I dare not impute perjury to men by 
the hundred ; the concurrence of so many is itself conclusive 



54 A TLEA FOR THE COUNTRY 

against the hypothesis of fabrication ; and I must be pardoned if 
my legal habits will not allow me to weigh partisan denials 
against testimony sworn in the face of cross-examination. I 
make no plea for some strained or one-sided inferences which 
my friend from Ohio has drawn from that evidence. I tender no 
apology for the one-sided results drawn by my friend from Mis- 
souri. I am here, sir, for no party. I am speaking this day for 
the Constitution and the Union ; I am pleading for the great 
rights of American citizens; I am pleading for the honor and in- 
tegrity of the American government and the American name. I 
will set down no word in malice that would tinge the honor of 
the country, or hide one dark trait which the people of the coun- 
try ought to know. The reason that the North is opposed to the 
Democratic party is that they have done these things. 

Now, sir, perhaps we begin to see why the Northern people 
will not support Mr. Buchanan. Why will they not support 
him ? Why will not the Conservative vote be given for him ? — 
for there is a Conservative majority. They will not vote for the 
Democratic party, or for the Democratic nominee, because they 
have been guilty of these things. They will not vote for them 
because they have never repented in sackcloth and ashes. They 
will not vote for them because they have denied the wrongs be- 
fore the proof, and defended them after the proof. The}'- will not 
vote for them because they have reiterated the insult. They will 
not vote for them because they have blazoned on their banner the 
very words of the ambiguous oracle of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, 
the very cause and declaration of war, now no longer deluding 
any one, but plainly, and in bloody letters, interpreted on the 
fields of Kansas. 

These are reasons they think sufficient, and the}* are likely to 
continue to think them sufficient. If Mr. Fillmore were in that 
position they would not vote for him. Ay, sir, even a conserva- 
tive Northern man, tempted by a spirit of revenge and retaliation, 
would have to argue with himself a long time before he could 
bring himself down to vote for this man, who has outraged all 
the feelings with which these men have been brought up. The 
best and most conservative of them — thousands of degrees from 
abolitionism — men who are supporting the Constitution and the 
Union — men who are willing to support and defend the institu- 
tion of slavery — men like those of Boston, who execute the Fugi- 



AGAINST THE SECTIONS. 55 

tive Slave Law, marched down the streets of that city with loaded 
arms to shoot down their own citizens, that you, men of the South, 
might be protected — these arc the men you have driven from you. 
Where will they go if Mr. Fillmore were not offered to them as 
the symbol of peace ? 

Sir, I put it to my honorable friends to apply to them the ar- 
guments they hold valid at the South. The Northern men arc 
of like passions with us, moved by insult, not above revenge, and 
not given to prefer, in a sectional contest, the candidate of their 
opponents. My Democratic friends from every hustings in the 
South exhort the people to vote for Mr. Buchanan because he is 
the Southern candidate — because he is for the Kansas- Nebraska Act 
— because he is against compromise in a Southern sense — because 
he is the strongest man opposed to the Northern sectional candidate ; 
and by this sort of argument they admit that the sectional candi- 
date at the North represents the same class of men at the North 
that they represent at the South — men who are no more unrea- 
sonable in a Northern than they in a Southern sense. As they 
appeal to the South, so do the men who support Mr. Fremont 
appeal to the North. Gentlemen of the Democratic party, judge 
ye how far they are entitled to weight. Arc they conclusive? 
Do they compel me to yield my political preferences ? Is it right 
that I shall go for Mr. Buchanan ? Am I bound to bow the knee 
to him? Is it so desperate a case that I must stomach the slurs 
and imputations which were hurled on me and the American 
party during two or three months of this session? Shall I, for 
these considerations of a merely sectional character, because he is, 
as you say, the candidate of my section, abandon those who stood 
by us? I pray you to recall to your memories, and weigh well 
the obloquy cast on the American party. We were, you say, an 
unconstitutional party — yea, the very enemies of the Constitution. 
We were opposed to civil and religious liberty ; we were for de- 
priving men of equal rights ; we were for driving the honest for- 
eigners from our shores ; we were midnight assassins, stained with 
the blood and dirt of riotous mobs ; we had taken unconstitution- 
al oaths not to obey the Constitution ; we could not be touched 
in the speaker's contest; no compromise could be made with us; 
no exchange of candidates could be thought of for a moment. 
The honorable gentleman from Pennsjdvania (Mr. Fuller), who 
better accords with their notions on slavery, in theory and in 



56 A PEEA FOR THE COUNTRY 

practice, than the honorable member from Illinois, so long their 
candidate, could not be touched. The very meeting in Conven- 
tion — the very meeting in caucus — ay, sir, the very meeting for 
open consultation, was scorned, and flung back in our faces. They 
could not touch such political lepers. A plurality rule was an 
alternative they preferred, knowing the consequences of the vote 
would be to place the present speaker in the chair. 

Such was their conduct to us — so conciliatory, so amiable, so 
loving, so winning ; yet, in the face of this rough wooing, they 
urge us, because of our connection with the South, to abandon Mr. 
Fillmore, the choice of our hearts, for Mr. Buchanan, because Mr. 
Buchanan is the safe and strong man for the South, the representa- 
tive of Southern interests. So intensely did they hate us — so much 
more did they hate us than the gentleman from Massachusetts 
(the speaker) ; yet so paramount do they regard the allegiance to 
the sectional candidate that they ask us to sacrifice our personal 
preferences, our political connections, our outraged dignity, for 
their triumph. 

Be it so. Is that the intensity of their sectional devotion ? I 
ask them to apply the argument north of Mason and Dixon's line, 
and tell me who, if he is not utterly abandoned and degraded, can, 
under these circumstances, vote for that candidate who holds the 
position their candidate holds at the South, and toward the South. 
I make here no argument of my own. I take honorable gentle- 
men upon their principles. I commend to their lips the chalice 
they mixed and poisoned for mine, and I dare them to the task. 
I know that my friends, in rashness and in hot party strife, have 
done many things to endanger the Constitution. I do not believe 
they wish to elect Fremont ; but, sir, if they had been bent di- 
rectly on that purpose, no man could find out any manner which 
would more directly and more inevitably accomplish that result 
than that which has been pursued. 

I wish to free it from all collateral issues, and put this one 
great argument before the country, so that there shall be an end ; 
to get rid of Mr. Fillmore by this appeal to Southern prejudices, 
I wish to deal with that and nothing else to-night. I sa}', sir, if 
Mr. Fillmore be not supported by the South, the whole North, 
and every state of it, must and will, conservative men and mad- 
men, vote for Mr. Fremont, by the very same reason that South- 
ern Democrats urge to induce Southern gentlemen to abandon 



AGAINST THE SECTIONS. 57 

Mr. Fillmore for Mr. Buchanan. There needs but these words to 
accomplish it: "Fillmore is deserted by the South he saved." 
That one line would be a quietus undoubtedly of this contest. 
Democrats must accept that result of their own reasoning. They 
claim every Southerner in the name of sectional interest. The 
Republicans will claim every Northern man in the name of 
Northern interests. If he must obey, they must obey. Is the 
North, will the Democrats admit, less excitable, less hostile than 
themselves? If not, the sectional feeling must press them at 
least equally. Will they be likely to listen more readily to rea- 
sons for Mr. Buchanan than Southern men to reasons for Mr. 
Fremont? Or will not both be more accessible to arguments for 
Mr. Fillmore than either? Do they suppose the Northern laborer 
to be less interested than the Southern planter in the question of 
free and slave labor? or is he more cool and unprejudiced, when 
his livelihood and personal dignity are involved, than the South- 
ern planter, whose property only is affected ? 

The argument, therefore, must be abandoned, or it must be ad- 
mitted as unquestionably true that the logical result is to drive 
the whole North, not into the arms of Mr. Buchanan, but into the 
arms of Mr. Fremont. 

The Democratic party at the North has melted away into the 
Fremont party. They form its strength. They have done so 
because they were specially grieved by the use made of their rep- 
resentatives in the Kansas-Bill conflict. They had always been 
what in other people the Southern Democrats called Free Soil. 
That shone out in the remarks of the honorable gentleman from 
Ohio (Mr. Loiter), whose series of resolutions for fifteen years 
spoke the language — beginning in the Democratic Conventions 
and ending in the Republican Conventions — with a unity of sen- 
timent and language defying the detection of the point where the 
Democrat shaded off into the Republican. It is for this reason 
that this blow has been so fatal to the Democratic party of the 
North — that the hatred of the North is so deadly against it, and 
yet is confined to it, and yet so sagaciously under control, so 
much of method in their madness, that they will not allow a 
chance to Mr. Buchanan of the election by pluralities, but will 
defeat that by any combination. 

This view should determine the South to disentangle its cause 
from the fragments of the broken, powerless, and obnoxious Dem- 



58 A PLEA FOR THE COUNTRY 

ocrats. The Democratic party are no longer fit mediators be- 
tween the North and South. How can they exact performance 
of the Texas Compromise? how protest against a repeal of the 
Fugitive Slave Law? how demand that the Wilmot Proviso be 
not extended to all the Territories ? how claim the admission of 
more slave states ? Their mouth is sealed on these topics before 
the revenge of the Eepublicans. By the law of retaliation, these 
things would be natural and just punishments to that party which 
has swept away the compromises and denied the principles on 
which all these rights rested. The Eepublican closes his mouth 
with the reply, "You (the Democratic part}') have no right to ap- 
peal to us." 

It is only in the name of the Southern people — of the men who 
do not join in the outrage — that these dire consequences can be 
surely avoided. The repudiation of the Democratic party is the 
first condition and best security for peace and safety. It silences 
the plea of revenge and retaliation. The people of the South owe 
it to themselves and to their future as completely to discard the 
Democrats as the people of the North have withdrawn from them 
their confidence. 

But there are Democratic gentlemen who anticipate the success 
of the argument in driving every body to support Mr. Fremont, 
and who speculate on the consequences. There are men who go 
about the country declaiming about the inevitable consequences 
of the election of Mr. Fremont, and the question is asked whether 
that simple fact is not sufficient, not merely to justify, but to re- 
quire a dissolution of the Union. The question has been asked 
of me to-day. That is a question which I do not regard as even a 
subject of discussion. It never will be done while men have their 
reason. It never will be done until some party, bent upon ac- 
quiring party power, shall again, and again, and again exasperate, 
beyond the reach of reason, Northern and Southern minds, as my 
Southern friends have now exasperated the Northern minds. It 
would be an act of suicide, and sane men do not commit suicide. 
The act itself is insanity. It will be done, if ever, in a tempest of 
fury and madness which can not stop to reason. Dissolution 
means death — the suicide of Liberty without the hope of resurrec- 
tion — death without the glories of immortality, with no sister to 
mourn her fate, none to wrap her decently in her winding-sheet 
and bear her tenderly to her sepulchre — dead Liberty left to the 



AGAINST THE SECTIONS. 59 

horrors of corruption, a loathsome thing, with a stake through 
the body, which men shun, cast out naked on the highway of 
nations, where the tyrants of the earth, who feared her living, 
will mock her dead — passing by on the other side, wagging their 
heads and thrusting their tongue in their cheek at her, saying, 
Behold her ! how she that was fair among nations is fallen ! is 
fallen ! — and only the few wise men who loved her, out of every 
nation, will shed tears over her body to quiet her manes, while 
we, her children, stumble about her ruined habitations, to find dis- 
honorable graves wherein to hide our shame. 

Dissolution ! How shall it be ? Who shall make it ? Do men 
dream of Lot and Abraham parting, one to the east, one to the 
west, peacefully, because their servants strive? That states will 
divide from states, and boundary-lines will be marked by com- 
pass and chain ? Sir, that will be a portentous commission that 
will settle that partition, for cannon will be planted at the cor- 
ners, and grinning skeletons be finger-posts to point the way. It 
will be no line gently marked on the bosom of the republic — 
some meandering vein whence generations of her children have 
drawn their nourishment — but a sharp and jagged chasm, rending 
the hearts of great commonwealths, lacerated and smeared with 
fraternal blood. 

On the night when the stars of her constellation shall fall from 
heaven, the blackness of darkness will settle on the liberties of 
mankind in this Western world. This is dissolution. If such, sir, 
is dissolution, as seen in a glass darkly, how terrible will it be face 
to face? They who reason about it are half crazy now; they 
who talk of it do not mean it r and dare not mean it. 

They who speak in earnest of a dissolution of this Union seem 
to me like children or madmen. He who would do such a deed 
as that would be the maniac, without a tongue to tell his deed or 
reason to arrest his steps ; an instrument of a mad impulse, im- 
pelled by one idea — to smite his victim. Sir, there have been 
maniacs who have been cured by horror at the blood they have 
shed. 

Gentlemen ask, " If Mr. Fremont be elected, how will Maryland 
go? what will Maryland do?" I do not allow that question to 
be asked. She knows but one country and but one Union. Her 
glory is in it ; her rights are bound up in it. Her children shed 
their blood for it, and they will do it again. Beyond it she knows 



60 A PLEA FOR THE COUNTRY 

nothing. She does not reckon whether there is more advantage 
in the Union to the North or to the South ; she does not calcu- 
late its value ; nor does she cast up an account of profit and loss 
on the blood of her children. That is my answer to that ques- 
tion. But, sir, it is portentous to hear the members of a party 
contesting for the presidency menace dissolution and revolution 
as the penalty they will inflict on the victors for defeating them. 
People who do not hold the Union worth four years' deprivation 
of office are scarcely safe depositaries of its powers. 

But if these are to be the bloody consequences of a successful 
concentration of the Northern vote for Mr. Fremont r will not my 
Democratic friends, as the result of the argument, allow the mod- 
erate and conservative men of the North and South a chance to 
cling to those around who, being open to reason, yet doubt how 
they shall vote, and reiterate in their ears reasons why they 
should not drive this dangerous issue to a decision ? They sup- 
pose that because, in the wreck of parties, they must go to the 
wall or to the bottom unless Mr. Fillmore can be gotten rid of, 
that which is necessary to save them is necessary to save the 
Union. " We are the state;' 1 '' what is good for us, therefore, is good 
for the state, is their reasoning, and the Kansas Act and civil war 
is the conclusion. Self-love, party devotion, have misled them. 
Their safety and their success involve great danger to the repub- 
lic, and in their ruin lies the safety of the republic. 

Sir, they boast at the South, and it is their Io triumphe, that 
they have defeated and overthrown abolition. Is it from this 
great struggle, then, that the Democratic ranks are weak, and 
wan, and thin ? Why, sir, the Abolition party fell beneath the 
blows of Millard Fillmore, leading the conservative men of all 
parties — the Clays, the Websters, the Footes, the Bentons of that 
great era of 1850, and was laid in a tomb inscribed with those 
acts, and bearing on its base the words Millard Fillmore fecit, 
Their leaders covered the journals of the Senate with their pro- 
tests against those wise but obnoxious concessions which laid the 
evil spirit. But when the monster was overthrown and the field 
deserted, they dug up the dead body, and laid it at the feet of the 
South, and claimed their reward : 

" Lo our trophy ! Io our scalp ! to you be the spoil of our sword and spear." 
Why, sir, they " fought a long hour by Shrewsbury clock." 
When Prince Hal made Percy food for worms, Falstaff counter- 



AGAINST THE SECTIONS. Q\ 

feited death ; and when the fight was over and the victor gone, 
Falstaff, thus soliloquizing — 

"Zounds, I am afraid of this gunpowder Percy, though he be dead. Therefore 
I'll make him sure ; yea, and I'll swear I killed him. Nothing confutes me but 
eyes, and nobody sees me" — 

stabbed the dead body in the thigh, shouldered it, and cast it at 
the feet of the victor : 

"There is Percy; if your father will do me any honor, so; if not, let him kill 
the next Percy himself. / look to be either earl or duke, lean assure you." 

The prince turned away, Falstaff following : 

"I'll follow, as they say, for reward. He that rewards me, God reward him !" 

Mr. Chairman, I have but a few words more to say. Whose 
cause am I pleading? I speak here in behalf of that vilified par- 
ty, representing the great mass of the American people in revolt 
against the domination of effete parties, which is willing, irre- 
spective of the chances of defeat or success, like its great leader, 
to devote itself to the Constitution and the Union. I am bound 
to see, and will see that contending factions do not make the for- 
eign vote the balance of power in this country. I have resolved 
that, so far as in me lies, religion shall be banished from politics, 
and no man shall attempt to invoke the religious prejudices of 
any man. Sir, I will devote myself to weeding out these transac- 
tions, with the Secession party of the South, with the Abolition 
party of the North, with religious parties aspiring to political 
power, be they Methodist or Catholic, with foreign votes that can 
be bought, with the venal of all parties, who play the game of 
power with the interests of the people, and light the war of sec- 
tional interests that they may be sutlers to the camp. And 
whether we succeed to-day or not until to-morrow, time is for us, 
the future is ours. The young American cries the name of the 
American party, and imbibes its principles, in his earliest and 
pristine vigor. These sentiments will not die out for a genera- 
tion, and in less than a generation the republic can be saved. I, 
sir, shall abide by that candidate who has been selected by this 
party to protect the interests of this country. 

Between the candidates of rival factions I will not select. I 
can accept no statesman of twenty days, whose only principle is 
the forcing of the Topeka Constitution on the necks of the Kansas 
people, without pledges to the future for good behavior, or a past 
to read the future by. I marvel at my Republican friends, still 



Q2 A PLEA FOR THE COUNTRY AGAINST THE SECTIONS. 

smarting under the experience of what one unknown man may 
do, walking with their eyes open into the same trap. I can accept 
no man whose tortuous career touches alternately each extreme 
of the political sphere, his political life merged in a party plat- 
form, and chosen of the leader of the Democratic party to torment 
the North to madness, and to follow in the footsteps of this admin- 
istration on the bloody ground of Kansas. I have no preference 
between two men who dispute the doubtful honor of applying 
the torch to the temple of the Constitution. 

No law can quiet Kansas unless a soothing administration soft- 
en the exacerbated feelings of the people. With such an admin- 
istration no law is needed. If Mr. Buchanan be elected, he will 
follow the bloody policy of this administration, whose sins and 
glories — Greytown, Ostend, Kansas, and all — decorate and oppress 
him. If Mr. Fremont be elected, he will be the hero of a counter- 
revolution, fierce and merciless as is the retaliation of the op- 
pressed — the sport of fierce passions, to which he will owe his 
power, and which he can not and dare not control. 

I shall, in this crisis, adhere to Millard Fillmore, who knows 
not where the South ends or the North begins, equally above fear 
or flattery, decorated with the glory of an illustrious administra- 
tion, saluted " Pacificator" by the acclaim of the people, and now 
alone capable of restoring peace to this distracted land. He has 
been tried on each extreme of fortune. He has passed through 
the torrid zone of heady and tempestuous youth without excess ; 
he has trod the temperate zone of matured manhood, where am- 
bition burns with strongest flame, and reason stands ready to 
minister to its bidding, unswayed by any temptation ; and now, 
near the close of a great career, in that last zone when the head 
is covered with the snows of many winters and the sun of reason 
knows no setting, when there is no mist to cloud the eye and no 
passion to lead astray the heart, the past of life is more than the 
future, temptation jeopards more than it can promise, and only 
posterity and the throne of God are before him, he can do justice 
in the face of temptation, and between contending factions who 
can not do justice to themselves. To him I shall adhere in every 
extremity. To him I summon my countrymen in the name of 
the Union he saved. And in this great issue I put myself on 
God and my country. 



THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE (1856).— THE 
TEACHINGS OF THE LATE ELECTION. 

Mr. Davis took an active part in favor of Mr. Fillmore in the canvass 
preceding the election for President held in November, 1856, and which 
resulted in the choice of Mr. Buchanan. At the following (third) session 
of the Thirty-fourth Congress (December, 1856, to March, 1857) Mr. 
Davis was named on the Special Committee of Investigation into alleged 
corrupt practices of certain members, and took part in the Plouse in the 
debates on the reports and conclusions of that Committee ; on the bill to 
guard against corruption and corrupt practices in legislation, and on the 
bill to refund duties on goods destroyed in (United States) warehouses 
by fire. On the 6th of January, 1857, the question of referring the 
President's Message to the Committee of the Whole on the State of the 
Union being under consideration, Mr. Davis, of Maryland, said : 

Mr. Speaker, — Grave perplexities have arisen in interpreting 
the teachings of the late election. A singular diversity of views 
has been revealed. Gentlemen of the same party have differed 
as widely as those of opposite parties. The gradually widening 
circle of debate has drawn in great numbers on every side. As 
Democrat and Republican have been crippled in the conflict, 
fresh friends have poured in to the rescue; and the result of every 
addition has been that doubt has been piled upon doubt, confu- 
sion has become worse confounded, until he who attempts to read 
the recent election by the recent debate in this House will find 
himself with authorities for any opinion, with testimony for any 
fact, with views confounded and unintelligible, in endless mazes 
lost. 

The gentlemen of the administration have exhibited some sens- 
itiveness on the question who opened the debate. Wherever the 
responsibility rests, the great differences of opinion that it has 
elicited more than justify me, now that the debate has raged for 
weeks, in reviewing the field, summing up the results, and point- 
ing the attention of the people to the great diversity with which 
the question they have decided, and the judgment they are 
supposed to have pronounced, has been interpreted. Sir, this 



64 THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE (1356). 

discussion was not opened either by the gentleman from Ohio 
[Mr. Campbell] or by another gentleman in the other wing of 
the Capitol, now not far distant [Senator Wilson]. It origin- 
ated neither in this House nor in the Senate. Its first word is 
found in the President's Message. He was justly fearful that the 
people might mistake their approval for a rebuke; that their 
unaided vision might not discover the comfort under the castiga- 
tion, nor be quite aware that behind a frowning Providence they 
hid a smiling nice ; and therefore he wisely availed himself of his 
constitutional privilege to lead their tottering steps in the wa}>- 
he would have them go'. So witless is the fling, that the 'van- 
quished have reopened a closed controversy ! 

Far be it from me to imitate the spirit which breathes through 
that extraordinary document. They only can fitly apologize for 
it who can estimate the bitterness of a spirit broken by such a 
fall ! I do not care to open any controversy either with its state- 
ments, its reasonings, or its scoldings ; but I may be allowed to use 
it for instruction, and the country to profit by its. teachings. It re- 
veals some facts of sinister import. The President first teaches us : 

"That as senators represent their respective states, and members of the House 
of Representatives their respective constituencies in each of the states, so the Presi- 
dent represents the aggregate population of the United States .'" 

Napoleon Bonaparte said to an insubordinate assembly, " You 
are only the deputies of single provinces — I represent the nation /" 
Thus to compare small things with great, our President respect- 
fully assigns us our lower sphere, wherein we should behave not 
unseemly. Be it so, Mr. Speaker. Amid all the diversities, there 
is one fact which no one has controverted. It was fairly stated 
by the gentleman from Tennessee, and is apparent on every 
return of the aggregate vote. Mr. Buchanan ascends the chair 
of state against the will of a majority of about four hundred 
thousand of the people of the United States. If, therefore, the 
President represents the aggregate population of the Union, Mr. 
Buchanan does not represent, but misrepresents the people of the 
United States ! 

The President farther instructs us in what the people have 
decided in the election of Mr. Buchanan. " They have asserted," 
he sa} 7 s, " the constitutional equality of each and all of the states 
of the Union, as states.^ He means that they who by their votes 
elected Mr. Buchanan, voted for that principle contested by their 



THE TEACHINGS OF THE LATE ELECTION. 55 

opponents, or he means nothing. If it has settled that principle, 
it proves that a majority of the people of the United States are 
opposed to the equality of the states I 

" They have affirmed," says the President, " the constitutional 
equality of each and all of the citizens of the United States as 
citizens, whatever their religion, "wherever their birth or their 
residence." If so, then it proves that a great majority of the 
people of the United States deny the equality of the United Slates — 
deny their equality by reason of their religion — deny their equality 
by reason of their residence — deny their equality by reason of 
their birth ! 

" They have asserted," says the President, " the inviolability of 
the constitutional rights of the different sections of the Union." 
Then a majority of the people of the United States have in the 
late contest been inimical to the constitutional rights of the states, 
and have been endeavoring to break them down ! 

The President farther informs us that " they have proclaimed 
their devoted and unalterable attachment to the Union and the 
Constitution, as objects of interest superior to all subjects of local 
or sectional controversy, as the safeguard of the rights of all, as 
the spirit and the essence of the liberty, peace, and greatness of 
the republic." 

If so, then a majority of the people of the United States have 
declared against those great principles ; they are inimical to the 
existence of this Constitution ; they are inimical to the rights of 
some great sections of the country ; they are bent on war and not 
on peace ; for a great majority of the people have voted against 
the man who, the President says, is the symbol of this decision. 
Sir, if the President's opinion is right, that those great and vital 
principles were in contest, then the vote of the people is more 
full of awful portent than any they have ever cast, and the day 
of our dissolution draws nigh. If they were not in contest, then 
that message is the most ungracious -sarcasm ever flung by a 
President on the people who lifted him above his fellows. 

It is of evil example for the President to have departed, in the 
language of his message, from the severe courtesy, the respectful 
reserve, the passionless dignity observed by his predecessors in 
alluding to the conduct of sovereign states, or the motives of 
great bodies of the people in the highest function of their sover- 
eignty. It is of all things most deplorable that, elevated above 

E 



QQ THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE (1S5G). 

the turbulent atmosphere of a popular canvass, the President 
should have stooped to the region of the storm, been swayed by 
the passions of the strife whose excesses it was his high duty to 
have restrained, and that, stung by the great condemnation of the 
vote of the people, should have poured out the bitterness of his 
heart in sharp vituperation of his judges, forgotten the President 
in the partisan, and inflamed the passions already consuming the 
vitals of the republic. 

But, Mr. Speaker, the people have taught some lessons worthy 
of being learned — not those the President -would inculcate, nor 
such as arc grateful to Democratic hearts — yet fruitful of warning 
and admonition, and quite visible to the dullest eye. 

It proves that a minority of the people desired to see Mr. 
Buchanan President of the United States. Nobody ever doubted 
that. 

It proves that a minority of the people were in favor of the 
Kansas-Nebraska Act. Nobody ever questioned that, 

It proves that a minority of the people approve of President 
Pierce's administration. Nobody ever doubted that ; but nobody 
knows how small that minority is. 

It proves that a minority of the people are content that his 
system of misrule may be prolonged for another four years. 
Nobody ever doubted that. 

It proves that the minority which preferred Mr. Buchanan was 
so located in various states, that under the Constitution it could 
cast a majority of the votes of the electoral college; and this is 
the only point touching that minority about which there was ever much 
doubt. 

It proves, farther, Mr. Speaker, that a majority of the people 
have condemned the Democratic party. 

It proves that a majority of the people arc opposed to that ad- 
ministration of President Pierce, which a minority propose to 
continue for four years. 

It proves that a majority of people of the country think it time 
that the misgovernment of Kansas should cease. 

It proves that no diversity of interpretation can extort any 
thing but condemnation of the principles and the purposes of the 
Kansas-Nebraska Act from a majority of the people of the country. 

It proves that Mr. Buchanan comes into power with a decided 
majority of the people against him; with every proposed princi- 



THE TEACHINGS OF THE LATE ELECTION. (57 

pie of his administration condemned beforehand; with the great 
Democratic majority in the Senate narrowed to the very verge of 
a bare working mnjority ; with the House of Representatives, so 
far as any experience teaches, against him ; with only about one 
third of the representatives from the North in his favor, and they 
chiefly representing minorities, and chosen by the divisions of 
their opponents ; and thus that, for all his cherished purposes of 
mischief, his administration is paralyzed before its birth. 

Still more, sir, it dissipates the sweet delusion of the dead he- 
roes of the Nebraska Act, that there was a day of resurrection for 
them. It demonstrates that the blast which prostrated its friends 
in the North was no passing squall ; that no sober second thought 
has changed their first thought; but that a settled and unchange- 
able hostility through all the North condemns them to a hopeless 
and pitiable minority. The death-wound, I rather think, has been 
dealt to that party which insolently boasted itself a perpetual 
plague to the republic, but now — worse than the scotched snake — 
staggers to its grave like a wounded gladiator, whose fall, even 
in the arms of victory, wins for him neither pity nor a crown. 

These are some of the lessons about which I think there can be 
very little difference of opinion. They need only the teaching 
of numbers. They need only to count the results of the ballot- 
box. They depend on no adjustment of the difference of princi- 
ple between the different portions of the party. They are irre- 
spective of the question whether the approval of President Pierce's 
administration was made or evaded north of Mason and Dix- 
on's line. They still stand, no matter what meaning was assign- 
ed to the Kansas-Nebraska Act any where. On a simple count 
of the voices of the judges — even admitting a Northern and a 
Southern Democrat to mean the same thing — it appears that the 
great majority of the country are tired of its men, are hostile to 
its principles, condemn its measures, mock at its blunders, are 
weary of its agitations, abhor its sectional warfare, and have order- 
ed hue and cry to be made against every thing bearing the name 
of Democrat as a disturber of the public peace. Instead of re- 
pentance and reform under the discipline administered two years 
ago, the majority of the people of the country have beheld with 
alarm every element of electioneering torture applied to wring 
from the terrors of the country an approval, real or apparent, of 
the conduct of the administration ; and they have by this great 



08 T1IE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE (185G). 

vote indicated their abiding hostility to a policy which has brought 
the republic to the verge of ruin. This, I take it, is the judg- 
ment of the American people — only they were so unfortunate as to 
differ as to the measures of redress ; and the penalty of this blunder 
is die continuance of that domination in the executive chair for four 
years more. 

Thus condemned by the popular vote, these gentlemen of the 
minority arc ingenious in extracting an approval of their policy 
and principles, but in the vain effort they have revealed that the 
minority itself is divided as much with itself as from its oppo- 
nents. While claiming an approval of their principles by the 
country, the minority is itself wrangling as to what those princi- 
ples are. 

The world has long known that they were divided on every 
question of domestic policy — that their harmonious ranks included 
protectionists and anti-protectionists. The last session exhibited 
great internal improvement bills passed over the veto by Demo- 
cratic votes. But still they boasted that on the slavery question 
— the shibboleth of their faith — Democrats were every where the 
same faithful friends of the Southern and Northern rights — alone 
at the North worthy of trust. They passed the Kansas Act to vin- 
dicate the right of the South to enter Territories with their slaves ; 
they, therefore, alone, are worthy of Southern countenance! 
They have wrung from the country the approval of the principles 
of that act; they have vindicated the equality of the states; they 
have asserted the right of the people of a Territory to frame their 
own domestic institutions ; and for these things the country has 
conferred power on them ! 

Sir, the Kansas Act was an enigma till read by the light of the 
late election. What my opinions of it are is immaterial. I de- 
sire now to deal with it historically — to deducie some conclusions 
from the discussion that has rolled around me for so long. 

The Kansas-Nebraska Bill was introduced, it is said, to vindi- 
cate the equality of the states, and the right of the South to carry 
their slaves into the Territories. That act conferred on the Ter- 
ritorial Legislature power " over all proper subjects of legislation ;" 
and its framers, for fear that there might be one subject of legis- 
lation that was withdrawn from their consideration, in extending 
over them the laws of the United States, said, " Excepting the 
law of 1820, which, being inconsistent with the principles of the 



THE TEACHINGS OF THE LATE ELECTION. QQ 

legislation of 1850, is hereby declared inoperative and void, it 
being the true intent and meaning of this act" — as if there might 
have been doubt in the mind of the country as to what that act 
intended to confer on the people — " it being the intent of this act 
to leave the people of the Territory [ay, sir, 'of the Territory'] 
perfectly free to form their own institutions to suit themselves." 
Early in the last session of Congress it became apparent that there 
was a diversity as to the object and effect of that act. As the 
session progressed, that diversity grew wider. Those same words 
were carried into the Democratic platform ; they were carried into 
the discussions before the people ; and I now desire to ask, in the 
face of gentlemen, how far there is any conformity of views be- 
tween the two wings of the Democratic party ? I aver at the 
outset that they are as widely divided as is the Republican party 
from the Democratic party, and upon exactly the same question 
of constitutional power that rests at the bottom of the words of 
the Kansas-Nebraska Act. 

There can be no controversy, I presume, among gentlemen 
here as to this great fact, that the language of the Kansas-Ne- 
braska Act confers by grant, as the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. 
Stephens] so accurately described it this morning, upon the peo- 
ple of the Territories all the legislative powers that Congress can 
confer; and as the Constitution says that "all legislative power 
herein granted is vested in the Congress, which shall consist of a 
Senate and House of Representatives," it is plain that, unless the 
doctrine of squatter sovereignty as expounded by the gentleman 
from Georgia be accurate, then this Congress has conferred all the 
power upon the people of the Territories which can exist under 
the Constitution, and that they have, and can have, no power 
from any other source. Now the pinch arises. One set of gen- 
tlemen say, " Oh, that bill does not authorize the people of the 
Territories to exclude slavery." Another set of gentlemen say, 
"Oh, that bill does authorize the people to exclude slavery." 
Then we have explanations from the Southern wing of the party 
that it authorizes them to exclude it only when they come to form 
their state Constitution. " No," say Democratic gentlemen from 
the North, "the language is universal; it authorizes the people 
of the Territories to exercise all legislative power consistent with 
the Constitution, and we say that they can exercise it now, in their 
Territorial condition." As a mere question of legal interpretation, 



70 THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE (1856). 

there can be no dispute as to the meaning of the words. There 
may arise a question whether Congress have power to confer that 
authority ; but if Congress have it, then unquestionably it has 
been conferred. 

There is, therefore, a difference between the two wings of the 
Democratic party. It is not, Mr. Speaker, a mere difference of 
interpretation. It is not a mere dispute about the legal meaning 
of the words they have used. It is not a mere accident of legis- 
lation which a scratch of the pen could change. It is not some- 
thing which has been sprung upon them by accident, of which 
they had no notice before its arrival. But upon that most deli- 
cate of all questions — that one on which the minority boast them- 
selves the special defenders of the South, and in reference to which 
they say their Northern brethren are more faithful than other 
gentlemen at the North — on that question, and not upon the in- 
terpretation of the language of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, there is 
a radical, inherent, profound difference, splitting them from top to 
bottom, as irreconcilable as any other diversity of party views 
that can be exhibited in the history of the republic. It can not 
be pushed aside as a mere diversity of opinion on the Kansas- 
Nebraska Act, because it is carried back to the very foundation 
of the Constitution. And then we can understand, what other- 
wise, perhaps, we might not so well be able to understand, how it 
is that the Northern gentlemen of the Democratic party have sup- 
ported the principles of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and have united 
in the ckction of a President. Why, Mr. Speaker, the propriety 
of that act was not submitted to the people now at this election. 
That question was passed upon in the election of this Congress : 
and this side of the IIousc gives the answer of the whole North 
as to whether it ought or ought not to have been passed. No 
one proposed its repeal, and the restoration of the compromise, 
but Mr. Dunn, and that was made a ground of attack by North- 
ern Democrats on Republicans. The question at the North was 
one of reprisal and retaliation, revenge and conquest — not defense 
and restoration ; and Democrats and Republicans onty argued the 
question, which of the two best represented the North in that con- 
test for the Territories. 

But then another question arose, whether there could not be 
such an interpretation put upon that act as would enable gentle- 
men at the North still to stand with the Democratic party, and 



THE TEACHINGS OF THE LATE ELECTION. 71 

cast their votes for the same man, although differing in principle 
and pursuing a policy not merely different from, but hostile to, 
the purpose of the Southern Democrats. Therefore it is, that 
while at the South we have heard a universal interpretation that 
that act does not confer upon — that there is no power in the peo- 
ple of a Territory to exclude slavery — and I speak now in the 
face of a great majority of Southern gentlemen who were active 
in the canvass, and who can correct me if wrong — I say there 
was a unanimous interpretation by Democratic gentlemen through- 
out the South as to the purpose, meaning, and effect of the Kan- 
sas-Nebraska Act — we can understand how it was that, while 
throughout the whole South that law was claimed as a great 
Southern triumph, not merely in point of principle, but in point 
of policy and fact, as opening a hitherto barred territory to slavery, 
and giving a chance for another slave state to restore the dis- 
turbed equilibrium of the Union — as something to bind the South 
to the Democratic party forever for the great boon conferred upon 
them, the Democrats of the North could say, " We will accept 
with them that measure, not that we would have dared to have 
voted for it — not that we would have dared to have advocated it ; 
but now that the thing is done and can not be undone, preferring 
the Democratic party to any other party, and seeing their strength 
at the South, we are willing to aid that party at the South, and 
we are willing to adopt the principles of the Kansas-Nebraska 
Act — with a gloss, yielding none of our principles, not admitting, 
for a single instant, that Congress has not the power to legislate 
upon the subject of slavery in the Territories — not breathing such 
a suggestion, yet we are willing to abide by the principles of the 
Kansas-Nebraska Act as we shall interpret it." How interpret it ? 
" It is the best measure for freedom ; it breaks down all the com- 
promises ; it leaves the question open ; it confers legislative power 
upon the people of the Territorj'-. We will agree that the people 
of a Territory have power over the question of slavery. You 
will never hear of another slave state : we will make Kansas a 
free state ; and therefore we are willing to abide by the principles 
of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, because, although it ought not to 
have been passed, it perhaps will do no harm. While our South- 
ern brethren say it is a Southern triumph, we will claim it as a 
Northern one. That will enable us to maintain our position at 
the North in the party, and give us the full advantage of our 



72 THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE (1856). 

overwhelming power to vote slavery from the Territories." Why, 
sir, in more than one handbill, and in more than one newspaper, 
how many it boots not to inquire, it has been seen — yea, I have 
seen with my own eyes, in Pennsylvania and New York, Repub- 
licans taunted by Democrats with being opposed to freedom for 
having voted for Dunn's bill. I saw in more than one place — in 
more than one handbill — proclaimed " Buchanan, Breckinridge, 
and Free Kansas I" and the resjult of the colloquy which took 
place upon this floor between two gentlemen from Illinois the 
other day, shows how far authorities can agree as to what posi- 
tion was assumed by the Democratic party in that state. 

I have nowhere here heard it asserted that it was any where 
maintained as an accepted dogma of that party at the North, that 
Congress had no power over the question of slavery in the Terri- 
tories ; that the people had no power over it in the Territories ; 
lhat the people ought not to exclude slavery from the Territory 
of Kansas ; that they were opposed to the people doing it ; and 
unless there be gentlemen who can reconcile and justify all those 
things, then there is as great and wide a gulf in point of policy, 
as there is in point of constitutional principle, between the Demo- 
crats of the North and the Democrats of the South. For what 
matters it to the South that Congress shall not interfere if another 
instrument is substituted which will interfere ? Is it more humili- 
ating to the South to have a line of fair division, like that of 1820, 
giving part to the South and part to the North — aline and bound- 
ary of peace forever established here by the Congress of the 
United States — than to be rudely expelled by a Congress of Kan- 
sas squatters ? — here, where she is represented by her eloquent 
sons ; in the Senate, where she is protected by her equal vote * 
by the President, armed with the veto against all oppression, 
rather than there, where she is not represented, has no voice, and 
no veto ? Or are her interests more likely to be tenderly dealt 
with by the rude backwoodsman or the European Red Republi- 
can ? Or, if she may be excluded, is it so much more to her 
taste, or does it better comport with her dignity, that a few ram- 
bling emigrants get together in a log cabin by our authority — 
ay, under that bulwark of Southern rights, the Kansas Act — and, 
to improve the price of land, proclaim that slavery shall not exist 
— that at the line a man in a hunting-shirt, with a rifle on his 
shoulder and a bowie-knife at his belt, shall flaunt a blotched 



THE TEACHINGS OF THE LATE ELECTION. 73 

copy of the Wilmot Proviso in the face of the Southern emigrant, 
and bid him back in the name of the squatter kings — than that 
here, on solemn consultation, such partition be made that peace, 
and not war, may reign in the republic ? Does that mode of set- 
tling the matter touch the dignity of the South less ; or, rather, 
does it not touch it more? Or is justice more or less likely to be 
done ? 

" Oh, but it's of no consequence at all," say the gentlemen from 
Tennessee and South Carolina, "for if the people are opposed to 
slavery they won't protect it!" Indeed ! then it is only more ap- 
parent that the only point of agreement between the Northern 
and Southern Democrats is in the fact that directly or indirectly, 
by law or without law, they both admit slavery may be excluded. 
One would suppose the South had small favor to be grateful for. 
A right without a remedy is the lawyer's absurdity ; yet for Hiis 
the country has been brought to the verge of civil war! 

Prostrated in one effort, they try their limping logic on another. 
Their merit and unity consist in their assertion of the equality of 
the states and the right of the people of a Territory to form their 
own domestic institutions — the principles of the acts of 1850 vio- 
lated by that of 1820, and restored and reinaugurated by the 
Kansas-Nebraska Act, its vivifying principle. 

Sir, the President libeled the living, and his friends rob the 
dead to cover his nakedness. The very purpose and principle of 
the act of 1820 were to vindicate the equality of the states, ami 
the right of the people to form their own Constitution without 
control ; it was signed by Mr. Monroe for that very reason ; and 
they doubly blunder in law and history when under pretense of 
those principles they repeal it. 

The acts of 1850 inaugurated no new principle. They were 
acts of compromise — giving and taking, like that of 1820 — wisely 
suited to the present necessity, leaving unrepealed the laws of the 
central government of Mexico, and, if Congress could pass them, 
in full force as laws of Congress, just as the French and Spanish 
laws were left in full force in Florida and Louisiana when repeal- 
ed north of 36 deg. 30 min. by the act of 1820. 

If the acts of 1850 provided for the admission of states with or 
without slavery as the people might prefer, then that was the very 
principle consecrated forever as the law of the republic by the act 
of 1820 ; for the one purpose of the law of 1820 was to divide the 



74 THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE (1856). 

territory between the North and the South, and by the same au- 
thority to make one part slave and the other part free territory, 
while a Territon 1 - ; and the other thing settled in that law — and 
from that day down to the Kansas-Nebraska Act never assailed 
or controverted by any party known to the history of the repub- 
lic, and remaining now the accepted and conceded law of the Con- 
stitution every where, except among a few wild abolitionists of 
the Garrison and Beecher school — was, that the people of the Ter- 
ritory could, and alone could, frame their own institutions when 
they come to form their state Constitution ; and that Congress 
could neither impose a condition precedent, nor bind by a compact 
their absolute sovereignty over the matter. The effort in the 
Missouri contest was to place an inhibition on the State of Mis- 
souri — to cause the people of that Territory to provide specialh 7 
in their Constitution against the existence of slavery. It was that 
which was voted down — voted down, as I have said before, on the 
immortal argument of William Pinckney, of Maryland, who then 
stood as Maryland would alwa} T s have her sons to stand, defend- 
ing the constitutional rights of the weaker against the agressions 
of the stronger ; whose words of glory, vindicating the absolute 
equality of the states against the usurpation of the United States, 
form the fit prelude to that equal argument of the man of Massa- 
chusetts, who, ten years after, maintained the supremacy of the 
United States against the encroachments of the states. On those 
Cyclopean foundations have ever rested, and still unshaken rest, 
those two pillars of the Constitution, "the absolute and inalienable 
equality of the states in their sovereign functions, and the equally 
absolute supremacy of the United States within the sphere of their 
conceded powers ; the one unquestioned except by the Democrats 
of the State-rights and Secession school, the other never violated 
except — by whom ? — by the Democratic party in their Texas reso- 
lutions, which imposed, carelessly or deliberately, but expressly, 
upon future states — yes, states by name and not by implication — 
the very inhibition which Pinckney and Clay excluded from the 
statute-book by the act of 1820 — the gentlemen of that party who 
now impeach that great act, and its great authors, of violating the 
equality of the states, and invading the right of the people to form 
their own Constitutions ; for, unless the act of 1820 did those things, 
the Kansas-Nebraska Act is defenseless and senseless. Sir, are they 
not content to have pulled down the monument and decorate 



THE TEACHINGS OF THE LATE ELECTION. 75 

themselves with its rifled trophies, without staining the memory 
of the great dead with the reproach of the very thing they pre- 
vented others from doing ? 

But, they say, if there be differences, yet we agree in this — not 
to agitate the question in Congress — forsooth where their divisions 
are inconveniently visible, and bring scandal at the South — but 
to refer it to the Territories, where the two wings can privately 
fight it out ! How will the two divisions of the minority silence 
the majority ? Or is the President's Message an illustration of 
their silence? or do they expect the North to keep silence before 
it? or are they ignorant that they would die of silence in a year? 
' These were not the purposes of the Kansas Act, Mr. Speaker, 
in my opinion. I think it was an electioneering manoeuvre. That 
has been, at least, its effect, and its only effect. To the South it 
has secured neither a Territory, nor a state, nor a constitutional 
principle, nor peace. Its authors tear each other about its mean- 
ing, and pursue diametrically opposite purposes under its cover. 
They have accomplished nothing but to reopen a dangerous agi- 
tation — to bring themselves into hopeless minority, crippled by 
internal divisions. 

There is another lesson taught by this election. The Demo- 
cratic party has ceased to be a homogeneous body. It is bound 
together by no unity of principle. It is a conglomerate of incon- 
gruous materials — Whigs and State-rights men, and Secessionists, 
and Democrats, and Free-Kansas Democrats, and Free-Soilers, and 
Union men — not a mosaic, for that is a work of art — but huddled 
together by the confusion of the conflict. The Irish brigade stood 
firm, and saved them from annihilation ; and the foreign recruits 
in Pennsylvania turned the fate of the day. They have elected, 
by these foreigners, by a minority of the American people, a Presi- 
dent to represent their divisions ! 

The first levee of President Buchanan will be a curious scene. 
lie is a quiet, simple, fair-spoken gentleman, versed in the by- 
paths and indirect crooked ways whereby he met this crown, and 
he will soon know how uneasy it sits upon his head. Some fu- 
ture Walpole may detail the curious greetings, the unexpected 
meetings, the cross purposes, and shocked prejudices of the gen- 
tlemen who cross the threshold. Some honest Democrat of the 
South will thank God for the Union preserved. A gentleman of 
the disunionist school will congratulate the President on the de- 



76 THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE (185C). 

feat of Mr. Fillmore, whose quiet administration might have post- 
poned the inevitable day. The slavery propagandist will vaunt 
his triumph over the unwieldy North, and boast of conquered 
Kansas ; while the Northern gentlemen will whisper " Buchanan, 
Breckinridge, and free Kansas" in the presidential ear, and beg 
without scandal the confirmation of their hopes. Some Whig 
will remind him of the California letter, and exact the Pacific Rail- 
road at his hands; while the strict construction Democrat will 
execrate the usurpation, and cast sinister innuendoes against the 
mail which would not reveal its contents this side the Pacific. 
Pennsylvania will be touching in the cause of iron, and plead the 
merits of the October election ; while Democrats from the South 
and West plot the treason of free railroad iron, and carefully ad- 
just the loss and gain in votes. The Ostend Manifesto will be 
respectfully spoken of, and a Northern and Southern Democrat in 
a corner will nicely balance free trade against a slave state, and 
suggest that an imprudent steamer may favor the application of 
the principles of the manifesto, the President the while repeating 
to some enthusiastic Free-Soiler his resolution of 1819, to " pre- 
vent the existence of slavery in any of the Territories or states 
which may be erected uy Congress /" 

But how to divide the spoils among this motley crew — ah ! 
there's the rub. There are gentlemen who have united from 
every creed and every paily, and who make up this conglomerate 
of the present Democratic party, having changed no principles, 
still holding jealously the position of allies, not being, embodied 
into the party, but maintaining their own individuality. Sir, I 
envy not the nice and delicate scales which must distribute the 
patronage amid the jarring elements of that conglomerate — as 
fierce against each other as clubs in cards are against spades — 
which must decide whether the gentlemen of the Whig party who 
only acted as allies should be received and accepted as candidates 
for high office ; whether gentlemen of the Free-Soil school should 
sit down with gentlemen of the Cincinnati school ; whether the 
past shall be rasa tabula, or the criterion of acceptance or exclu- 
sion. There will be required a nice discrimination and a careful 
adjustment by some skillful accountant in party politics, in that 
curious chancery for the distribution of the spoils, to determ- 
ine the shares of Northern Democrats who were faithful, but 
failed, and Northern Free-Soilers who were heretics, but useful ; 



THE TEACHINGS OF THE LATE ELECTION. 77 

of the Whig convert and the Whig ally ; of Whig gentlemen of 
name — leaders who left their followers in their transition; of 
Whig leaders in states where they were zealous but not needed, 
and in states where they were zealous and needed, but powerless. 
And long ere this can be adjusted the clamors of the foreign legion 
will add to the interest of the scene — the vision of King George's 
judgment over again : 

" There crashed a sturdy oatli of stout Jolin Bull, 
Who damned away his eyes as heretofore. 
Here Paddy brogued ' by Jasus.' ' What's your wull ?' 
The temperate Scot exclaimed ; and, 'mid the war, 
The voice of Jonathan was heard to express, 
' Our President is going to war, I guess.' " 

They may not be disregarded, for but for them Pennsylvania 
was lost, and with, it the day. Yet what will satisfy those indis- 
pensable allies, now conscious of their power? That, sir, is tlic 
exact condition of things which will be found in the antechamber 
— exorbitant demands, limited means, irreconcilable divisions, 
strife, disunion, dissolution — whenever the President shall have 
taken the solemn oath of office, and darkened the doors of the 
White House. 

And there are lessons taught to the Republican gentlemen of 
this House as well as to the Democrats. They have been taught 
that, great as was the wrong; blundering as was the policy of the 
Kansas and Nebraska act; earnest as are the Northern people 
against the extension of slavery ; resolved as they arc. that no 
more slave territory shall be added to this country, they have like- 
wise shown that there is still one principle which they will not 
sanction. They will not sanction a merely sectional canvass for 
the presidency, nor intrust with the government a party whose 
whole power is confined to one half the states, whateVer their 
purposes may be. They will not sanction retaliation as the spirit 
in which wrongs is to be redressed ; they will not allow wrongs 
committed by a party of the South and of the North to be visited 
on all their Southern brethren, nor sanction retaliation as a fit 
political remedy. They have settled the polic} r , that if wrong has 
been done, reciprocal wrong is not redress. They have put the 
seal of their condemnation on revenge as a principle of legislation, 
and have refused letters of marque and reprisal against the South 
for wrong legally done, and requiring the remedy to be pursued 



78 THE PRESIDENTS MESSAGE (185G). 

by other means than a raid against Southern institutions. They 
think that the evils of civil war are greater than the evils of an- 
other slave Territory ; and the policy of the Eepublican party, 
while it did not justify, did tend to kindle civil war. They have 
resolved that there shall be no attempt to grasp the reins of power 
on principles which tend to exclude every Southern gentleman 
from office, and necessitate a decision by the country of the great 
question whether one half of the people of the Union will be gov- 
erned by the other half — for that was the only practical result of 
the success of the Republican party. Honest though their pur- 
pose may have been — as devoted to the Union as the friends of 
Mr. Buchanan, their position was unsocial, and their success dan- 
gerous. 

The great argument at the South has been — and there is no 
Democratic gentleman here who has not heard it, and I will ven- 
ture to say there are very few who have not used it — the argu- 
ment every where used at the South was, that it was a question 
of independence, and not of administration ; that it was a question, 
not whether the majority should rule according to the great con- 
stitutional principle, but whether a majority obtained under the 
forms of the Constitution, in such a manner as practically ex- 
cluded all Southern gentlemen from a participation in the con- 
duct of affairs, ought to be submitted to? Not that there were 
no friends of Mr. Fremont to fill the offices, for his fifteen hundred 
votes would pretty well answer that purpose ; nor that there was 
any reason which peremptorily forbade any one from accepting 
office, though inclined so to do ; nor that, in point of fact, it was 
at all certain that there could not be found men enough who 
would fill them — Northern emigrants would fulfill that condition ; 
but because the condition on which alone any party can fitly and 
safely be" intrusted with the government is the possession of pow- 
er, and friends enough every where to carry on the government 
with the men of the state to be governed, so that a domestic 
government shall not assume the form of a foreign domination. 
Instruments of any power may always every where be found ; 
but the office in such hands partakes of the nature of despotism, 
and such men alone were at the disposal of the Eepublican party 
in one half the states of the Union. They would doubtless have 
tendered high office to men of high position in the South, but the 
condition precedent of conformity of political views and princi- 



THE TEACHINGS OF THE LATE ELECTION. 79 

pies was "wanting. They could not aid in forming an administra- 
tion to whose creation and whose policy they were radically op- 
posed. Thus, practically, the Kepublican party must have em- 
ployed Southern men who represented no body of Southern sup- 
porters, or Northern men, to conduct the government ; and that 
is what is meant by a purely sectional party — their radical and 
incurable defect. They, by the simple statement of their position, 
confined themselves to the free states. Equal candor would have 
equally confined the Democratic party to the Southern States ; for 
the objects and principles of the Southern Democrats found, so far 
as I can see, no supporters in the North. They owe their little 
remaining power there to a common name and an ambiguous res- 
olution covering a radical hostility of purpose and principle ; but, 
honestly or not, they fulfilled that indispensable condition of car- 
rying on the government, that in most of the Northern States 
there were a minority content to vote for the candidate of the 
coalition of the Northern and Southern Democrats, and to be 
silent about their differences — the sole distinction between the sec- 
tionalism of the Democrat and the sectionalism of the Kepublican. 

The great lesson is taught by this election that both the parties 
which rested their hopes on sectional hostility stand at this day 
condemned by the great majority of the country as common dis- 
turbers of the public peace of the country. 

The Kepublican party was a hasty levy, en masse, of the North- 
ern people to repel or revenge an intrusion by Northern votes 
alone. With its occasion it must pass away. The gentlemen of 
the Republican side of the house can now do nothing. They can 
pass no law excluding slavery from Kansas in the next Congress, 
for they are in a minority. Within two years Kansas must be a 
state of the Union. She will be admitted with or without slavery, 
as her people prefer. Beyond Kansas there is no question that is 
practically open. I speak to practical men. Slavery does not 
exist in any other Territory — it is excluded by law from several, 
and not likely to exist any where ; and the Kepublican party has 
nothing to do, and can do nothing. It has no future. Why 
cumbers it the ground ? 

Between these two stand the firm ranks of the American party, 
thinned by desertions, but still unshaken. To them the eye of 
the country turns in hope. The gentleman from Georgia saluted 
the Northern Democrats with the title of heroes — who swam vi°r- 



80 THE PRESIDENT'S MESSx^GE (185G). 

orously down the current. The men of the American party 
faced, in each section, the sectional madness. They would cry 
neither free nor slave Kansas, but proposed a safe administration 
of the laws, before which every right would find protection. 
Their voice was drowned amid the din of factions. The men of 
the North would have no moderation, and they have paid the 
penalty. The American party elected a majority of this House ; 
had they' of the North held fast to the great American principle 
of silence on the negro question, and, firmly refusing to join either 
agitation, stood by the American candidate, they would not now 
be writhing, crushed beneath an utter overthrow. If they would 
now destroy the Democrats, they can do it only by returning to 
the American party. By it alone can a party be created strong 
at the South as well as at the North. To it alone belongs a prin- 
ciple accepted wherever the American name is heard — the same 
at the North as at the South, on the Atlantic or the Pacific shore. 
It alone is free from sectional affiliations at cither end of the Union 
which would cripple it at the other. Its principle is silence, peace, 
and compromise. It abides by the existing law. It allows no 
agitation. It maintains the present condition of affairs. It asks 
no change in any Territor} 7 , and it will countenance no agitation 
for the aggrandizement of either section. Though thousands fell 
off in the day of trial — allured by ambition or terrified by fear — 
at the North and at the South, carried away by the torrent of fa- 
naticism in one part of the Union, or driven by the fierce onset of 
the Democrats in another, who shook Southern institutions by the 
violence of their attack, and half waked the sleeping negro by 
painting the Republican as his liberator, still a million of men, on 
the great day, in the face of both, factions, heroically refused to how 
the hnee to either Baal. They knew the necessities of the times, 
and they set the example of sacrifice, that others might profit by 
it. They now stand the hope of the nation, around whose firm 
ranks the shattered elements of the great majority may rally and 
vindicate the right of the majority to rule, and of the native of 
the land to make the law of the land. 

The recent election has developed, in an aggravated form, every 
evil against which the American party protested. Again, in the 
war of domestic parties, Republican and Democrat have rivaled 
each other in bidding for the foreign vote to turn the balance of 
a domestic election. Foreign allies have decided the government 



THE TEACHINGS OF THE LATE ELECTION. 81 

of the country — men naturalized in thousands on the eve of the 
election — eagerly struggled for by competing parties, mad with 
sectional fury, and grasping any instrument which would pros- 
trate their opponents. Again, in the fierce struggle for supremacy, 
men have forgotten the ban which the republic puts on the intru- 
sion of religious influence on the political arena. These influ- 
ences have brought vast multitudes of foreign-born citizens to the 
polls ignorant of American interests, without American feelings, 
influenced by foreign sympathies, to vote on American affairs; 
and those votes have, in point of fact, accomplished the present 
result. 

The high mission of the American party is to restore the influ- 
ence of the interests of the people in the conduct of affairs — to ex- 
clude appeals to foreign birth or religious feeling as elements of 
power in politics ; to silence the voice of sectional strife — not hy 
joining either section, but by recalling the people from a profitless 
and maddening controversy which aids no interests, and shakes 
the foundation not only of the common industry of the people, but 
of the republic itself; to lay a storm amid whose fury no voice 
can be heard in behalf of the industrial interests of the country, 
no eye can watch and guard the foreign policy of the government, 
till our ears may be opened by the crash of foreign war waged for 
the purposes of political and party ambition, in the name, but not 
by the authority nor for the interests, of the American people. 

Eeturn, then, Americans of the North, from the paths of error 
to which in an evil hour, fierce passions and indignation have 
seduced you, to the sound position of the American party — silence 
on the slavery agitation. Leave the Territories as they are — to 
the operation of natural causes. Prevent aggression by excluding 
from power the aggressors, and there will be no more wrong to 
redress. Awake the national spirit to the danger and degradation 
of having the balance of power held by foreigners. Eecall the 
warnings of Washington against foreign influence — here in our 
midst — wielding part of our sovereignty ; and with these sound 
words of wisdom let us recall the people from paths of strife and 
error to guard their peace and power ; and when once the mind 
of the people is turned from the slavery agitation, that party 
which waked the agitation will cease to have power to disturb 
the peace of the land. 

This is the great mission of the American party. The first 

F 



82 THE PKESIDENT'S MESSAGE (1856). 

condition of success is to prevent the administration from having 
a majority in the next Congress ; for, with thai, the agitation will 
be resumed for very different objects. The Ostend Manifesto is 
full of warning; and they who struggle over Kansas may wake 
and find themselves in the midst of an agitation compared to which 
that of Kansas was a summer's sea ; whose instruments will be, 
not words, but the sword. 



AGAINST THE LECOMPTON FRAUDS. . 

In November, 1857, Mr. Davis was elected (for the second time) to the 
Thirty-fifth Congress. Mr. Orr, of South Carolina, was chosen Speaker, 
and by him Mr. Davis was again named on the Committee of Ways and 
Means. Pie was heard during that session on the Treasury-note Bill, 
on the Pacific Railroad Bill, on the bill relating to the reappointment of 
officers dropped or retired by the Naval Board of Incpiiry, and who had 
not been restored by the Revising Board, and on the Report of the Kan- 
sas Conference Committee. In that debate he stated correctly, and 
proved, from the records and from the argument of William Pinckney, 
of Maryland, the point settled by the Missouri Compromise — to wit, 
"That it assumed that there could be a restriction upon a Territory while it 
remained a Territory, and it settled that there could be no restriction, no 
condition imposed upon a state, not merely upon the subject of slavery, 
but upon any subject." He also spoke on the Ohio Contested Election 
Case, the Washington City Election Bill, and on the Civil and Legislative 
Appropriations. 

On the 30th of March, 1858, he spoke as follows against the admis- 
sion of Kansas under the Lecompton Constitution : 

Mr. Chairman, — The earlier explorers in high northern lati- 
tudes were perplexed at beholding great icebergs mysteriously 
making their way to the north against current, and wind, and tide. 
Philosophers in the closet divined from the strange phenomenon 
the existence of an under current running counter to that of the 
surface, that bore them along. The disinterested spectator, Mr. 
Chairman, of the course of this debate, ignorant of our history for 
four years, and of who now holds the helm, would find himself 
similarly perplexed, and perhaps he might surmise a similar so- 
lution. 

That an administration which professes to be the godfather of 
"popular sovereignty" should oppose the submission of a Consti- 
tution to the popular vote ; that an administration which is in 
name Democratic should propose to impose upon the majority 
the will of the minority ; that an administration elevated to power 
by the South, against the will of the North, should urge, as the 



$4 AGAINST THE LECOMPTON FRAUDS. 

shortest way to accomplish the great purpose of making Kansas 
a free state, her admission as a slave state ; that the administration, 
w*hich professes anxiety to preserve the peace of the country, 
should say that the shortest way to restore the broken peace is, 
not to remove, but to fasten, by irrevocable laws, in the form of 
a sta.te Constitution guaranteed by the united power of the country, 
that hateful oligarchy upon a people, whose neck was too tender 
to bear the weight of their, territorial yoke, which Congress could 
at any moment alleviate ; that these methods should be taken to 
accomplish these purposes, may well puzzle the speculator in ex- 
ploring the hidden reasons that drive men thus contrary to what 
apparent reason — the ordinary method of guiding the common- 
wealth, the ordinary propelling powers of the government — would 
seem to dictate. And possibly, Mr. Chairman, he might not be 
very far from solving the problem if he were to assume that the 
question is, not so much how to accomplish the pacification of 
Kansas, or to make legislation square with the dogma of "popular 
sovereignty" or to secure the right of the people to form their own 
domestic institutions in their own way, which we are taught to 
believe is a new revelation of the year of grace eighteen hundred 
and fifty-four — not so much any of those reasons as to prevent the 
administration, which boasted itself the omnipotent pacificator, 
from being brought to lick the dust, now, ere the termination of 
the first session of its first Congress — to lick the dust before the 
will of that majority which it is defying in one of the Territories — 
before the will of that majority of the people of the United States, 
against which Mr. Buchanan ascended the presidential chair, and 
amid the irreconcilable diversities of opinion of the people who 
were combined to elevate Mr. Buchanan to the Presidency — but 
here that men and parties are brought face to face — can no longer 
coalesce in the policy he would have them pursue. 

We are debating the recognition of an independent state. 

The administration produce a piece of parchment with a form 
of government written on it, and a certificate of one John C. Cal- 
houn, that it is the Constitution adopted at Lecompton by a Con- 
vention of the people of Kansas ; and on this evidence the Presi- 
dent and his friends demand the recognition of the State of 
Kansas. 

"We respectfully ask for the proof that the piece of parchment 
contains the will of the people of Kansas. 



AGAINST THE LECOHPTON FRAUDS. 85 

"We are told the Territorial Legislature took, by law, the sense 
of the people, and 2670 voted to call a Convention ; that 2200 
persons voted, in all, for the members of the Convention ; that the 
Convention, whose journal no one here has seen, voted the Con- 
stitution ; that it was not submitted to the people for their ratifi- 
cation, and that the vote of the 4th of January, of 10,000 against 
it, is of no legal relevancy to the question before us. 

On this state of facts, Mr. Chairman, we are besought, on behalf 
of the administration, to vote for the admission of Kansas under 
the Lecompton Constitution for the sake of the principle involved. 
Sir, I confess myself the servant of principle ; and I respectfully 
ask gentlemen what principle they ask me to sanction ? 

Is it that a minority in a Territory constitute the people, and so 
must make their will the law over the majority ? If so, I respect- 
fully dissent from the principle. 

Is it that the people of a Territory, with or without previous 
authority of Congress, have a legal right themselves to take the 
initiative, and to lay upon your table a Constitution which they 
are entitled to demand at our hands that we shall accept ? If so, 
then I respectfully dissent from the principle. 

Is it, on the part of our Southern friends, that any Constitution 
which may be laid upon our table containing, no matter how put 
there, a clause sanctioning slavery, is to shut the eye to every 
other circumstance connected with it, and to drive us to the ad- 
mission of that people as a state merely because that provision is 
in the Constitution? If so, then I respectfully dissent from the 
principle. 

Is it that they mean that gentlemen may look into the Consti- 
tution for the purpose of seeing that slavery is there, and when 
they find it there are bound to vote for the admission ? If so, 
then the gentlemen upon the other side of the house, by exactly 
the same reason, may look into that Constitution to see that slavery 
is there ; and, if they think it the more logical conclusion, may 
vote to refuse admission upon that ground. But as I do not un- 
derstand the gentlemen on the other side to admit the latter al- 
ternative as one fit to be embraced, they will indulge me in the 
logical consequence of not regarding the former as a proper con- 
sideration to weigh at all with me upon the question that is before 
the House. 

That slavery is embraced in that Constitution, is certainly, Mr. 



86 AGAINST THE LECOMPTON FRAUDS. 

Chairman, in my opinion, no ground at all for the rejection — no 
ground at all for any difficulty about admission. If put there by 
the will of the people, it ought not to weigh with the weight of 
the dust in the balance upon the question ; for to allow that to 
be a ground of exclusion, while it would be within the legislative 
discretion of Congress, would be, in my judgment, unwise, tend- 
ing directly to consequences that all of us are most anxious to 
avoid, and would exhibit' an unsocial disposition in behalf of the 
majority which might come to such a conclusion, which, whether 
rightfully or wrongfully, the past history of the nation teaches us 
only too well will lead to nothing but disastrous civil collisions ; 
which, in their result, if not immediately, will first undermine, 
and then bring down in ruin, the whole fabric of our liberties. 

Then, if these be not the principles which ought to commend 
themselves to the judgment of a right-judging man, is there any 
other? Is it that because the Territory has proceeded under a 
law of a Territorial Legislature, with all the regularity and for- 
mality, as the President tells us, that any territory has ever pro- 
ceeded, we are hound to accept what they send to us, blindly and 
without looking beyond it ? Is it the principle of this govern- 
ment not only that we may stop, but that we are bound to stop, at 
what the Territory sends to us ? Then, Mr. Chairman, I do not 
assent to that proposition ; and it is to that proposition that I de- 
sire chiefly to draw your attention now. 

Upon that question I am freer than most of the gentlemen upon 
either side of this House. I voted with my Southern friends 
against the Topeka Constitution, being a free Constitution form- 
ally sent here by the majority of the then inhabitants of the 
Territory. I am, therefore, free to raise the question whether 
there is legal authority at the bottom of that Constitution now 
presented to us? They protested against the admission of Cali- 
fornia because there was no evidence that a majority of its people 
had assented ; because there was no formality of law preceding its 
Constitution ; because there were no protections to the ballot-box. 
I am, therefore, now free to ask those who did protest to join me 
in inquiring whether there be here legal authority ; whether here 
the ballot-box has been protected ; whether here we have the will 
of the people ascertained in legal form which we not only may 
accept, but which we are bound to accept? 

This assumes the validity of the laws of the Territorial Legis- 



AGAINST THE LECOMPTON FRAUDS. 87 

lature calling the Convention, and the proceedings under them in 
point of law ; and that the legal effect of those proceedings is to 
clothe this parchment with all the attributes of a state Constitu- 
tion, and that we are not entitled to inquire who voted for or 
against it ; how many staid from the polls, or why they did so ; 
nor whether fraud or force have decided the result ; but that the 
legal certificates preclude inquiry into every thing beyond. 

I respectfully deny the validity in point of law, and farther 
say that if they were as valid as if authorized by act of Congress, 
they could to no extent exclude the legislative discretion of Con- 
gress as to the fitness of recognizing the new state. 

Mr. Chairman, in my judgment, all that is necessary to the ad- 
mission of a state is a concurrence of the will of the people of a 
Territory and of Congress. Prior to such concurrence there is no 
state. After that concurrence there is a state. The application 
of a Territory to be admitted as a State is only a petition upon 
your table — an offer upon their part which we may accept or 
which we may reject at our pleasure. After that concurrence it 
has been ingrafted into the living body politic of the county, 
bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh, to share with us for good or 
evil, to the end of time, the blessings or misfortunes of the repub- 
lic — to be severed by nothing except that external violence which 
shall lop off some living limb of the republic, or that civil strife 
which the chief of the republic is so rashly provoking. 

Enabling acts, whether contained in the organic law of the 
Territory, or in special acts authorizing the formation of a Con- 
stitution, providing for the formalities of election, the protection 
of the polls, the expression of the popular will under the forms of 
law, are only the guarantees that Congress in its wisdom throws 
around the expression of the popular will. They are only methods 
of ascertaining that will ; and when that will is ascertained, Con- 
gress has every thing that' is indispensable, and all the Territorj^ 
can supply. The will of Congress to concur with the will of the 
people is expressed in the act of Congress admitting the state ; 
and it is that concurrence, no matter how ascertained, by what 
forms, or with the omission of what forms, which makes the dis- 
tinction, and alone makes the distinction between a Territory of 
the United States and a state of the United States. 

There is no such thing in our system as an incipient state — a 
state whose federal relations are undefined, a state of uncertain 



88 AGAINST THE LECOMPTON FRAUDS. 

federal relations, as Mr. Calhoun once expressed himself. I re- 
spectfully submit that there is no intermediate condition between 
a Territory and a state ; that a state whose federal relations are 
undefined is a state of which the Constitution of the United States 
knows nothing. Uncertain federal relations are no federal rela- 
tions. Unless the state be in this Union, the state is out of this 
Union. Unless the state be bound by the Constitution, the state 
is independent of the Constitution. Unless the state have a right 
to be here represented, the state has no right to be represented 
any where. It is a state under the Constitution, or it is a state 
independent. If, therefore, any proceeding create a state which 
does not simultaneously bring it within, and make it one of, the 
United States, that state may as well form an alliance with the 
incipient confederacy of Canada and New Brunswick as enter 
this confederacy. It may levy war against the United States, and 
you can not punish its people for treason. It may appropriate 
the territory of the United States, and it is beyond your power. 
In a word, by the public law of the United States, all the terri- 
tory within their jurisdiction is either a Territory of the United 
States or a state of this Union. 

If, then, that be the case, we are brought at once to the ques- 
tion of the relation of Congress to the Territories in the formation 
of states. What are the respective parts belonging to the people 
of the Territory and to the Congress in the creation of a new 
state ? 

With the dogma of sovereignty I do not deal here. I leave 
that to the schools or to the gentlemen who meddle with meta- 
physical disquisitions. What sovereignty is I shall not attempt 
to define. The word is not used in our laws; it is not found 
among the wise words of our Constitution. It is the Will of the 
Wisp, which they who follow will find a treacherous guide through 
fens and bogs. We are not engaged in defining that " popular 
sovereignty" with which gentlemen on the other side have been 
so much plagued for the last year or two. Popular sovereignty 
is only a demagogue's name for the foundation principle of all our 
institutions. It is only a demagogue's name for the right of the 
people to govern themselves — not that popular sovereignty which 
is limited by, and springs from, an act of Congress — not that mush- 
room growth, bred in the hot-bed of political corruption as a dainty 
delicacy for the people's palate, under the sedulous care of my hon- 



AGAINST THE LECOMPTON FRAUDS. 89 

orable friends opposite — which, now that it is grown, is found to 
be nothing but toad-stools, whereof the body politic is now sick — 
but that right of the people to govern themselves, recognized by 
the fundamental law as the very corner-stone of the republic, 
which in this case the President violates and denies. 

I here this day would deal in legal language ; and in legal lan- 
guage there is such a thing as the people of the United States, of 
which the people of a Territory form the subjects. And there is 
known in the law of the United States such a thing as the right 
of the people of a state to form their own government. And it 
is assumed that every state which can form, at any time, a part of 
these United States, shall have emanated spontaneously from the 
people, whose affairs it regulates, and shall have been received 
voluntarily into the United States by the authority of Congress. 

Now, sir, what is the relation of Congress to the Territories ? 
Have the Territories — I do not say any natural right, for I am 
not here upon a philosophical dissertation — have they any legal 
right to initiate proceedings to form a Constitution? I do not 
ask whether they may not come here and ask, by petition, Con- 
gress to receive them, for that does not meet the difficulties of 
the case ; but I ask whether the people of any Territory, by their 
simple volition, can meet in Convention, and assume to themselves 
such legal powers as shall compel Congress to recognize them as 
a legal body. Certainly those gentlemen who protested against 
the admission of California because there had been no preceding 
law can not maintain that proposition. Certainly gentlemen who 
voted against the Topeka Constitution can not maintain that prop- 
osition. Certainly the gentlemen who signed what purported to 
be a report of the Committee of Investigation of this House can 
not maintain that proposition. Certainly the President, who de- 
voted a great part of his message to demonstrate that it is only 
through legal channels, by legal forms, and under legal authorities 
that a Constitution could be formed, can not maintain that propo- 
sition. 

Neither can we, in point of sound sense and reason, maintain 
it, because that assumes there is a power in the people of some 
portions of the Territory not derived from the Constitution of the 
United States — since the Constitution says nothing upon the sub- 
ject, except that Congress may admit new states. And if they 
have any inherent power, by the same reason they have all power; 



90 AGAINST THE LECOMPTON FRAUDS. 

in other words, we are ujdoii revolutionary ground, and not legal 
ground. It is to confound a right by law under the Constitution 
with the natural right mentioned in the Declaration of Independ- 
ence, of people to alter and change their government to suit them- 
selves. But we are not dealing with revolutionary, but with legal 
rights. We live and were born under the Constitution, and to us 
that is the ultimate criterion of legal rights ; it is our embodiment 
of natural right in a living practical form of government ; beyond 
it we recognize no natural right as a source of legal right, and he 
who can not deduce his claim of right under it has none. I sub- 
mit, therefore, that by the law of the United States the people of 
a Territory have no original right or authority to form a state 
government. No public man of position and character of any 
party has ever ventured to maintain such a proposition distinctly. 
The distinguished head of the State Department has fallen into 
expressions which seem to imply it ; he has hastened to repel the 
inference, but, in his haste, has involved himself and his opinions 
in inexplicable perplexity and mystification, whence nothing can 
rescue him. 

Then, if there be no inherent legal right in the people of a Ter- 
ritory to form a state government, how is it to be accomplished ? 
They must form it ; Congress can not do it for them ; yet Con- 
gress is the only legal authority, the only source of law for the 
Territories. Where, then, does it exist ? I maintain that, so far 
as legal authority is asserted of, or essential to, any proceeding for 
a Convention, it must flow from Congress, because here only is 
any government over the Territories in the eye of the law of the 
United States. The Supreme Court, which even State-rights gen- 
tlemen nowadays regard as the ultimate arbiter upon all ques- 
tions, has settled some other things besides the relation of slavery 
to the Territories, and among them it has settled that Congress, 
alone governs the Territories — whether under the clause which 
authorizes them to make all needful rules and regulations for the 
Territory of the United States, or under some unwritten clause 
implied by the strict constructionists, it is needless here to inquire. 
It can flow from nowhere else, because a state, in the view of the 
Constitution of the United States, means a body of people within 
a particular Territory, and that Territory belongs to the people 
of the United States ; and the people who live upon a particular 
portion of that Territory have no right to assume to themselves, 



AGAINST THE LECOMPTON FRAUDS. 91 

without our assent, any portion of it. A state involves the idea 
of a certain population inhabiting and possessing a certain Terri- 
tory ; and if the people can not get the Territory without the as- 
sent of Congress, they can not make themselves a State without 
the assent of Congress, nor take any steps toward it essential to 
its existence, which can exclude the control of Congress. Gon- 
gress, it is true, can not make a Constitution for a Territory. It 
can only throw around the people of a Territory a legal protec- 
tion, authorize them to proceed, and give them the guarantees of 
law in their proceedings ; but beyond that I apprehend Congress 
can do nothing, and, excepting Congress, nobody can do that. 
What I wish here to maintain is, that that is the fundamental 
principle of all the legislation of Congress upon that subject. All 
the history of the republic is in its favor ; it has all authority in 
its favor; and there is no precedent which raises even a doubt 
against it. 

Now, sir, I ask the attention of the Committee very briefly to 
the law — for I rose to-day to deal with the legal position of gen- 
tlemen on the other side. They have not been willing to enter 
the controversy with their opponents on the question of fraud in 
the formation of the Constitution, or whether it be the fair and 
bona fide expression of the will of the people. They have insisted 
that these things were concealed from them by a screen of legal 
technicalities, and it is to tear down that screen that I now ad- 
dress myself. 

In the absence, therefore, of any special act of Congress, author- 
izing a Convention, the only question is the construction of the 
Kansas-Nebraska Act of 185-1. Does that act confer on the Ter- 
ritorial Legislature power to call a Convention to form a Consti- 
tution ? 

There have been many states admitted into the Union, and 
under diverse circumstances, but much the greater number of 
them have been admitted under the express and precedent au- 
thority of laws of Congress. And, sir, you will perceive at once 
— if the authority can only come from Congress to take the initia- 
tive steps — that it is immaterial whether that authority be con- 
tained in the organic act or in a special act. In either case it is 
our authority that they are exercising. In every instance they 
are our agents. In every instance they have only the authority 
that we give them. And, therefore, it comes exactly to the same 



92 AGAINST THE LECOMPTON FRAUDS. 

thing whether there was an enabling act to authorize the Terri- 
tory to proceed to form a state Constitution and government, or 
whether the authority was given under its organic act. This can 
never be a judicial question; but it is settled by every form of 
political authority. The states of Vermont, Kentucky, Maine, 
anfl Texas have been admitted into the Union, but not, as has 
been erroneously stated, without precedent legislation. If it 
were so, it would not affect the argument, for they were never 
Territories of the United States. But the assumption is histori- 
cally erroneous. Vermont went through the Eevolution without 
any defined relations to the other colonies, claiming independence 
at the time of the Revolution under no colonial government; and 
as a state by its own inherent power, it acceded to and adopted 
the Constitution of the United States, exactly as the other states 
did. It is no case of the formation of a state out of a Territory 
of the United States. Texas was likewise an independent repub- 
lic, acknowledged by the United States, and afterward received 
into the Union. Kentucky proceeded under a law of the State 
of Virginia, whose territory it then was, and on that authority 
formed its Constitution, and was admitted into the Union. Maine 
proceeded under the authority of a law of Massachusetts, whose 
territory it was, and by that means formed its state government 
and was admitted into the Union. 

But the argument is irrelevant ; for the question is not whether 
Congress may in its discretion recognize constitutions formed by 
the people without authority of law, but whether a Territorial 
Legislature was in point of law authority to legalize the election 
of a Convention, to give the Convention itself a legal existence, to 
vest it with legal power to bind not merely the people, but the 
Congress. No one denies the power of Congress to admit Ten- 
nessee and Florida, yet nobody ever asserted any legal validity 
in their proceedings before admission. 

The language of the organic acts and the proceedings of Con- 
gress thereupon are decisive. 

The Territories divide themselves into two great classes. In 
Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, 
Tennessee, and Michigan, the Legislatures had "power to make 
laws in all cases for the good government of the people of the said 
Territory not repugnant to or inconsistent with the Constitution 
and laws of the United States." 



AGAINST THE LECOMPTON FRAUDS. 93 

In Wisconsin, Minnesota, Oregon, Florida, Iowa, the power of 
the Legislatures were declared to extend — in the identical words 
of the Kansas-Nebraska Act — "to all rightful subjects of legisla- 
tion not inconsistent with the Constitution and Laws of the United 
States." 

Congress has construed both forms of expression by passing en- 
abling acts for both classes. Not only for Ohio, Louisiana, Mis- 
souri, Mississippi, Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, but also for "Wiscon- 
sin, Minnesota, and Oregon, did Congress pass acts specially 
authorizing them to call a Convention and form a state govern- 
ment; and in every instance, excepting Wisconsin, these bills 
provided all the details of the Convention, the number of delegates, 
its time of assembling, the modes under which the delegates 
should be elected. It is plain Congress thought the power " to 
make laws in all cases" necessarily extended it " to all rightful sub- 
jects of legislation." It is plain Congress thought neither form of 
expression authorized the temporary Territorial government to 
create a Convention to form a Constitution which would begin to 
operate only after the Territorial Legislature itself had ceased. 
Its power to govern was confined to the Territory — a temporary 
contrivance for a temporary purpose — involved in all the local 
interests and conflicts of Territorial politics — and not safely to be 
intrusted with the providing for a Constitution. In a word, they 
were authorized to make laws to govern the Territory; but a 
law for a Constitution was no law for governing a Territory at all. 

The case is stronger under the Kansas Act, for it reserves to 
Congress the power to make two or more states or Territories out 
of that Territory; and if Congress have the right to make two 
states, it is absurd to suppose it gave the Legislature power to 
make one state of it. 

But there are cases of Territories which have spontaneously 
petitioned for admission under Constitutions framed without an 
enabling act, and they are fruitful of authority. 

The proceedings for the admission of Arkansas, Michigan, and 
Iowa — where there were no acts of Congress authorizing Conven- 
tions — are decisive. 

The law admitting Arkansas declared the boundaries of the state. 
That, I suppose, establishes the fact that nobody then maintained 
that there was any authority in her Constitution prior to her ad- 
mission. The territorial limits of a state are essential to her 



94; AGAINST THE LECOMPTON FRAUDS. 

existence ; till they are defined there can be no state ; after there 
is a state, Congress can not determine its right of territory. On 
the Territory depend the counties, the election districts, the judi- 
cial divisions, the apportionments of representation, the very peo- 
ple who are entitled to be heard on the adoption of the Consti- 
tution. 

If the Territorial law can authorize a Convention which can 
adopt a Constitution having any legal force prior to the recogni- 
tion of Congress, it must have the right to define and appropriate 
the territory of the state it creates ; and if it have not this power, 
it can not create a state in the eye of the law at all; for Congress 
may destroy its identity by taking away a half, or two thirds, or 
all its territory, and give it to another state. 

Congress recognized the State of Michigan upon the condition 
that her people should accept the boundaries Congress prescribed ; 
and on their acceptance only was Michigan admitted. 

Iowa was declared to be admitted as a state in 1845, under her 
Constitution of 1844, Congress declaring her boundaries, and re- 
quiring the assent of her people to them. But in August, 1846, 
Congress prescribed by law other boundaries for Iowa, and by that 
law recognized the validity of the proceedings of the Legislature 
of the Territory of Iowa of the 17th of January, 1846, submitting 
the boundary between the Territory and Missouri to the Supreme 
Court; and finally, in December, 1846, Congress declared Iowa 
admitted into the Union under a Constitution formed in May, 
1846, and with the boundaries of the law of 1846. 

The case of Wisconsin is still more decisive. The Territorial 
legislative power extended to all proper subjects of legislation ; 
yet Congress passed an enabling act, and it defined the bounda- 
ries of the future state, on the 6th of August, 1846. The people 
formed a Constitution, on the 16th of December, 1846, and Con- 
gress admitted the state on condition the people assented to other 
boundaries. Instead of merely assenting to the boundaries, they 
formed a new Constitution on the 1st of February, 1848, and on 
their application were admitted as a state with the boundaries of 
the enabling act, on the 29th of May, 1848. 

These cases demonstrate that, whether a Constitution be formed 
by the people, under or without an enabling act, the Constitution 
has no force oflaio, over either person or territory, till the final and 
complete admission of the state. Till her senators and represent- 



AGAINST THE LECOMPTON FRAUDS. 95 

atives are entitled to their seats, the Territorial authorities con- 
tinue, the organic law is operative and supreme, the Territorial 
Legislature retains its legislative power, Congress can absolutely 
dispose of the Territory, assign its limits, and -exercise its discre- 
tion whether to admit the people as a state or to retain them as they 
are. In a word, these cases display the great fact lost sight of in 
this controversy, that, till actual and final admission as a state, the 
Constitution is not a law; it is merely a proposition which will be- 
come operative only when Congress recognizes the existence of 
the state. 

"With reference to Michigan, a controversy arose in the Senate 
which elicited some salutary opinions. We have first of all the 
statement of his excellency the President, then in the Senate. 
When Michigan was applying for recognition, the exact question 
arose whether there was a legal power in the Territorial Legisla- 
ture to proceed, their powers being as I have stated them. Mr. 
Buchanan then said : 

' ' We have pursued this course [that is, to disregard informalities] in regard to 
Tennessee, to Arkansas, and even to Michigan. No senator will pretend that their 
Territorial Legislatures had any right whatever to pass laws enabling the peojile to 
elect delegates to a Convention for the purpose of forming a state Constitution. It was 
an act of usurpation on their part." 

This was said in the hearing of the whole Senate, that no sen- 
ator would contend that they had legal authority, and he asserted 
that it was an act of usurpation ! And, so far as the record shows, 
no man rose to controvert the authority of this distinguished 
expositor of Democratic doctrines of that day. Well, sir, that 
covers the three cases of proceedings by Territorial Legislatures 
without authority from Congress by special act. That destroys 
the whole argument which has been attempted to be founded 
upon them. With reference to Arkansas, I am protected by the 
authority of a name dear to the party which he founded. The 
governor of that Territory applied to General Jackson to know 
whether the Territorial Legislature had any authority to pass an 
act for the purpose of taking the sense of the people on the sub- 
ject of a state Constitution. General Jackson took the opinion 
of his attorney general, Mr. Butler, and the opinion of that distin- 
guished lawyer, acquiesced in by the whole administration, was, 
that there was no legal authority in the Territorial Legislature, 
but that it was beyond their temporary functions ; that there was 



96 AGAINST THE LECOMPTON FRAUDS. 

no authority inherent in the people, but that they were subordi- 
nate to the power of Congress, governed, as he says, under that 
clause of the Constitution which gives Congress power to make 
all needful rules and regulations for the territory of the United 
States. The new lights had not risen in their day. And, as if 
no authority should be wanting entitled to command respect with 
every division of the various opinions that are entertained now 
in this House, we have the farther authority of a gentleman from 
whom, in many respects, it is my misfortune to have differed in 
political opinion, but who, in my judgment, was one of the ablest 
gentlemen that ever graced the councils of this country — more 
conservative, manly, and upright in his views, and convictions, 
and conduct, than almost any man of his party ; always ready to 
sacrifice party allegiance upon the altar of truth ; always follow- 
ing the dictates of an independent judgment, as well in his votes 
as in his reasoning, and, for that reason, justly the worshiped idol 
of the great Southern section of this country. ' I suppose that the 
strict constructionist gentlemen of this House will not accuse me 
of any sympathy for dangerous dogmas from Federal quarters 
when I quote the authority of Mr. Calhoun : 

"My opinion was," said he, "and still is, that the movement of the people of 
Michigan in forming for themselves a state Constitution, without waiting for the 
assent of Congress, was revolutionary — " 

"What docs the incumbent of the executive chair say to that 
now ? Why were not the military forces of the United States 
directed, instead of guarding and protecting the Lecompton Con- 
vention, to turn them out, as they were directed to turn out the 
Topcka Convention, equally illegal or equally legal ? 

Mr. Calhoun proceeds to assign the reason : 

"As it threw off the authority of the United States over the Territory." 

That he regarded as necessarily involved in the very idea of 
their assuming to themselves to take the first step, in a legal form, 
toward the establishment of a state government. 

He proceeds to say : 

"And that we were left at liberty to treat the proceedings as revolutionary, and 
to remand her to her Territorial condition." 

For doing which, with reference to Kansas, we are now threat- 
ened with the direst consequences by the gentlemen who then 
concurred in this opinion : 

" Or to waive the irregularity." 



AGAINST THE LECOMl'TON FRAUDS. 97 

Now all the argument of our friends on the other side is to. 
follow the regular course, and break down the irregular course — 
only they have agreed to call the regular course that which Mr. 
Calhoun called the irregular course. lie proceeds to say : 

"And to recognize what was done as rightfully done — as our authority alone was 
concerned — my impression teas that the former was the proper course; but I also 
thought that the act remanding her back should contain our assent in the usual man- 
ner for her to form a Constitution, and thus leave her free to become a state. 

And so a distinguished gentleman in another place [Mr. Crit- 
tenden] thought, not long since, and possibly there are some here 
who may think like him. 

Well, sir, no gentlemen can rise here and cite any administra- 
tion- that has ever existed in this republic, down to the beginning 
of Mr. Buchanan's administration, that has ever so flagrantly vio- 
lated the laws of the republic as to recognize any proceeding of a 
Territorial Legislature on this subject as having authority of law. 
No man can name any high officer of the government that has 
ever said so, as no man can show any vote of Congress that has 
ever looked to such a recognition. It was, sir, the first blunder 
— to be followed up consecutively and logically by other blun- 
ders in law, in policy, as well as in morals — that this administra- 
tion made when it recognized the legal authority of the Lccomptou 
Convention, assembled under the Legislature of Kansas. It was 
the last of the novelties which have been palmed on the country 
as sound law, to break the fall to which the inventors of the 
Kansas-Nebraska Act have been staggering for the last four years. 

Sir, it was new in this administration. No member of cither 
house of Congress, at the last Congress, thought that there was 
any authority in the act of 1854 for the people to proceed, or for 
the Territorial Legislature to proceed. That law reserved to Con- 
gress the right to divide the Territory. How, then, could it au- 
thorize the people of that Territory to form themselves into one 
state? Did it contemplate that the wandering rabble that was 
there when that law was passed had then the right? And if they 
had not the right, pray how and when was the construction of the 
law changed, so far as the legal meaning is concerned, by the ac- 
cession of population? 

Did President Pierce, when he requested Congress to settle the 
difficulties of Kansas by passing a law authorizing them to form 
a state Constitution when they should have ninety-three thousand 

G 



98 AGAINST THE LECOMPTON FRAUDS. 

inhabitants, think the people of Kansas then had that authority? 
Did the gentleman [Mr. Toombs] who, in another place, during 
the last Congress, moved a bill authorizing them, when they 
should have ninety-three thousand inhabitants, to form a Consti- 
tution, and providing all the detailed organization of the Conven- 
tion, think that without that law they had the authority then ' 
Diil this House, when it passed Mr. Dunn's bill, suppose they 
were doing then what the Territorial Legislature had the right 
already to do, although that bill postponed the exercise of the au- 
thority it conferred until their population had reached the requi- 
site point? If they did not, then we have the concurrent opinions 
of all departments of the government during the last administra- 
tion — nay, of every member of the last Congress of both sides, 
Democratic and Republican, as well as of all previous administra- 
tions — of the statute-book speaking for itself no less than the 
reason and nature of the proceeding against the possibility of any 
legal validity being imparted to the Convention and its proceed- 
ings by virtue of the Territorial laws ; and those things of them- 
selves ought to be sufficient, in my judgment, to settle the principle 
that there is no legal authority in the Territorial Legislature to proceed 
in the matter. 

But it is perfectly clear that the law of the Legislature of Kan- 
sas itself has not been executed. It required a census to be taken 
in all the counties. It was not taken in half of them. It required 
the appointment of delegates to be made after the census was 
"completed" and "returned." It was made before the census 
was more than half taken. The law contemplated an apportion- 
ment on the basis of a completed census of the whole Territory, 
and of course, till that was done, there w T as no authority to make 
any apportionment. The causes of failure arc immaterial to the 
legal point, but they are certified official ty, by the governor and 
secretary, to have been the neglect of the local officers, and not the 
hostility or opposition of the people. It required the apportion- 
ment to be made by the governor and the secretary : it was made 
by the secretary alone, who was acting governor at the time. It 
required counties not having population enough for a delegate to 
be attached to some district. The fourteen counties excluded 
from the census were not attached to any district; they, there- 
fore, had neither vote nor representation, actual or constructive, 
in the Convention. This failure to execute the law alone is fatal 
to every idea of legal validity in the proceedings. 



AGAINST THE LECOMl'TON FRAUDS. 99 

If there was no legal authority in the Legislature, then I sup- 
pose that the fabric of my honorable friends on the other side 
tumbles about their ears. What becomes of the argument that 
we can not look behind the certificates ? Why, the certificates 
have no legal authority. What becomes of the argument that 
these people who staid at home authorized those who voted to 
vote for them? If there was no legal election, they were not 
bound by it. If there was no law requiring them to attend, stay- 
ing at home was their duty. They were only not participating 
in a usurpation. The foundation for a presumption of the assent 
of those who staid at home is, that the law required them to bo 
at the polls. The good old law of Virginia, as my honorable 
friend in my eye will remember, made it a punishable offense to 
stay away from an election ; and though there may be no law 
punishing it, yet it is a violation of law, and of the duty of the 
citizen, to stay away from an election. It is the duty of the citi- 
zen to cast his vote ; and if the citizen docs not cast it, he is held 
to authorize those who do ; but that can not be where the pro- 
ceeding has no legal validity — that presumption can not arise 
where it is merely a voluntary collection of a portion of the peo- 
ple of the Territory to signify their willingness to admit a certain 
form of Constitution without their having any authority to bind 
any body else. I suppose, then, that in that point of view, the 
whole argument upon the other side is in ruins. All their bar- 
riers of laws and certificates, presumptions against fact, and ac- 
quiescences extorted from protests and denials, are swept away. 

We are at liberty to see that only two thousand six hundred 
and seventy people voted on calling a Convention ; that only two 
thousand two hundred people elected the Convention ; that the 
census shows only nine thousand two hundred and fifty-one vot- 
ers, and twenty-four thousand seven hundred and eighty people 
in the Territory which has transformed itself into a state. And 
if they who hitherto insisted on confining us to legal returns and 
certificates now suggest the imperfections of the census and regis- 
try, I agree we may go farther and sec that there may be twelve 
thousand voters, and from thirty-seven thousand to forty-two 
thousand people in the Territory ; but of them not three thousand 
voters modestly ask the powers of a state government against the 
votes often thousand, and the protest of seven thousand. Nay, 
sir, emancipated from every trammel, we are at liberty and bound 



100 AGAINST THE LECOMPTON FRAUDS. 

to go farther, and to inquire whether there has been in this Ter- 
ritory such fierce collisions, such hostile passions, so much of re- 
bellion against the regular government, such an absolute division 
of the people with reference to their government, so much of civil 
bloodshed, so much of military control, such an absence of the 
ordinary political virtues, of calmness, of consideration, of delibera- 
tion as the President describes; whether an overwhelming ma- 
jority of the people arc opposed to the thing that is now sought 
to be forced or foisted upon them and devoted to another form of 
government. It relieves us from the fear of encountering the 
dangers intimated and vaguely hinted at by gentlemen upon the 
other side in the event of our venturing to do our duty. It leaves 
us free to determine whether, under all these circumstances, it is 
not a fair case for legislative discretion to pause and ask the peo- 
ple again what they say, upon "a sober second thought," about 
it — to see whether the people are likely to submit or likely to re- 
sist — whether any such great good is to be accomplished by now 
forcing this Constitution upon them that inevitable civil war will 
be compensated by it. 

We arc told by the President that this is the shortest way to 
settle the agitation. Mr. Chairman, I confess myself astonished 
at such an opinion from a gentleman who has seen so much of 
public service, has so long filled distinguished positions, and also 
knows, or ought to know, so much of human nature. Why, what 
has been the difficulty in that unfortunate Territory ? Was it not 
that their Territorial Legislature was usurped? Is not that the 
reason that, from the foundation of the Territory to last October, 
the people refused to recognize any authority under the laws 
emanating from that Legislature? Ilavc they not been quieted 
only by the earnest efforts and warm appeals, backed by the mili- 
tary power, of Governor Walker? Were they not quieted alone 
by the assurance which he gave them that they should have an 
opportunity of expressing their opinion on the law which was to 
govern them ? Did they not join in the October election because 
they had confidence in his assurances? Was it not the first time 
that the people of that Territory had ever met, face to face, in an 
American manner, at the common ballot-box? Was it not the 
first time that they had stood in any other attitude except that 
of hostility, with arms in their hands and hatred in their hearts? 
And arc wc to be told by the President that the way to pacify 



AGAINST THE LECOMPTON FRAUDS. 101 

tlicm is to subject them permanently to the hateful domination 
of the handful of men from whose hands they would have wrest- 
ed the government — as the President tells us — but for the United 
States troops ; that the whole sanctity and authority of a state 
government shall remove them from all the power of Congress 
to redress their grievances ; that they shall be admitted as a state, 
and thereby be delivered over to the legal authorities under the 
Constitution which they protest against, which Congress can not 
repeal, and will be bound to enforce if resisted? for, if the state 
be admitted, Congress has then no discretion but to follow the 
legal line of authority, and to put down every thing else as rebel- 
lion. But has not the President learned enough from the expe- 
rience of the last three years to make him pause ere he pushed 
the country upon this dangerous experiment, or is he madly bent 
on a party triumph at the risk of civil war, forced on people of 
Anglo-Saxon blood as the only alternative to a tame surrender of 
their right of self-government? 

The President's policy is high treason against the right of the 
people to govern themselves. His apology for his conduct is in- 
sulting to the victims of his usurpation. 

Is it true that the dividing line is between those who are loyal 
to this Territorial government and those who endeavored to de- 
stroy it by force and usurpation ? Then the Jailer have been no 
parties to the proceedings for a Convention, yet are to be subject 
to the Constitution. 

Is it true that the Territorial government would long since 
have been subverted had it not been protected from their assaults 
by the troops of the United States ? Then the stronger part of 
the people is against the proceeding for a Constitution, and it is to 
the weaker part the President proposes to confide the powers of 
state government over the stronger. Is not this to deliver the 
state into the hands of its enemies? or will the rebels submit 
when the United States withdraw its troops ? or arc they to guar- 
antee the new usurpation? 

Is it true that Secretary Stanton was obliged to summon the 
Legislature as the only means whereby the election of the 21st of 
December could be conducted without collision and bloodshed? 
Then why was Mr. Stanton dismissed for summoning them ? Was 
it in furtherance of the same policy which then refused the peo- 
ple an opportunity to speak, and, now that they have spoken, re- 



102 AGAINST THE LECOMPTON FRAUDS. 

fuses to bear them ? Or, if that election could not be conducted 
without collision and bloodshed because the people were subject- 
ed to an authority they defied, is it the purpose of the President 
to insure the collision and bloodshed Stanton avoided by forcing 
on them a government which they have protested and remon- 
strated against, and are ready to defy and destroy ? Is that the 
readiest method of settling the Kansas question ? 

Is it the truth that, up till the present moment, the enemies of 
the enabling government adhere to their Topeka revolutionary 
Constitution ? Then they are not likely to receive the Lecompton 
Constitution. 

Is the reason the people refused to vote for delegates to the 
Convention that they have ever refused to sanction or recognize 
any other Constitution than that of Topeka? Then surely they 
are not among those who sanction the Lecompton Constitution. 
It is not by their will it is put over them. It was not from acqui- 
escence they refrained from voting. Their silence is their dissent; 
the President tells us so. He says they would have voted against 
it had it been submitted. Surely, then, silence is as instructive as 
their voice. 

Sir, in my judgment, the passage of this law is a declaration of 
civil war. The history of the last three years in Kansas leaves 
no doubt that the people will not submit to this Constitution. It 
can not legally be changed before 1864. I think it a fair case for 
disregarding the form of law and the substance of law. If the 
constitutional authorities should concur in the change, peace may 
be preserved. I trust they will concur, and that peace will be 
preserved. But if they do resist the change which the mass of 
the people will demand, if we now refuse to listen to their protest, 
then, in my judgment, the shortest remedy is the best. 

Free government is a farce if men are required to submit to 
usurpation such as has here been perpetrated, and I fear the peo- 
ple of Kansas are not in a mood to assist at the farce. They will 
turn it into tragedy. Having heretofore resisted, we ought to 
suppose they will resist again. We ought to act wisely and care- 
fully, and, if we have discretion now, we will not drive this people 
upon revolutionary courses. Give them a mode of relief, and 
allow them to follow that peaceful course which they are inclined 
to follow, according to all reports from that Territory. Give them 
the opportunity of expressing their will as to the law under which 



AGAINST THE LECOMPTON FEAUDS. 1Q0 

they are to live; and, having expressed their will-whether it be 

matenal-allow them to come in at a proper time, with a proper 

population and with reasonable boundaries and a rich dower a 

one of the sister states r>f tV, Q ,.^„u 1 .-_ uower, as 



one of the sister states of the republic. 



REMARKS 

AT THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE EASTERN FEMALE 
HIGH SCHOOL OF BALTIMORE. 

DELIVERED IN BALTIMORE, MD., NOV. 1G, 185S.* 

Young Ladies of the Graduating Class: 

When the devotee of the Ganges would seek the favor of her 
God, at eventide she commits to the current of the river a lighted 
lamp, and watches with beating heart its course and its fate. If 
it sinks she returns sorrowing, for her God is not with her ; if it 
floats till lost in the distance and darkness, she returns rejoicing, 
for her offering is accepted. 

You are those lamps which the people of Maryland have com- 
mitted to the stream of time, their offering to that God who rules 
its current, to test his favor for this their highest sacrifice before 
him. If you shall fail, amid the temptations or the trials of life 
stray from the paths of truth and virtue, their offerings will stand 
condemned; but if, so long as life shall last, your lights shall shine 
on your fluctuating voyage, the examples of virtue, the guide of 
innocence, the illuminators of youth, then will the people of Mary- 
land know that their sacrifice was well pleasing to the God of 
nations. 

Before him they offer this their service in the cause of morals, 
light, and religion ; and by its fruits they shall divine whether it 
be a true or false way which they have chosen to serve him. 

To your conduct is committed this great religious service ; at 
your hands will the future demand it. 

And you, Fathers, Mothers, Friends of these maidens, to 
whose bosoms the state now restores them, how do you receive 
them? tarnished or purified? dimmed or brightened ? For these 
are the fruits of our " infidel" free-schools. These are fruits of 
that smattering education, that surface-culture, that varnish over 
poor material, whose only tendency is to beget vanity, to engen- 

* Mr. "Davis was invited to address the graduating class of young ladies at this 
Commencement. 



REMARKS AT THE COMMENCEMENT, ETC. 105 

der self-conceit, to turn the head with teaching above their station, 
to unfit them for the duties of the matron, and consign them to 
the life of the butterfly till they sink soiled into corruption ! 
Then let the system be judged by these its fruits. 

This is an American spectacle ; the image of the national gen- 
ius; the handiwork of the utilitarian republic. 

Well, let England glory in her Crystal Palace and its industrial 
splendors. Let France boast the camps of Boulogne and the mir- 
acles of her Cherbourg: we of this republic prefer to polish these 
diamonds. 

They are from our mine. "We first discovered that gold lies 
rather in the plains than on the mountains. We first explored 
the levels of creation for nature's richest treasures. We first dis- 
covered the hidden value of the common mind. We first pro- 
claimed that the impartial hand of the Almighty had sown his 
precious pearls of reason and affection in every vale as well as on 
the hills, as he did his dew, it may be in darkness, yet awaiting 
only the rising sun to reveal each blade of grass, however lowly, 
flashing with its morning offering of beauty. We first saw that 
the beauty was all there, and that, though the sun touched the 
hills first and the vales last, he touched all in his course ; and we 
are now displaying to the world the treasure we have found, some 
deep in the vales, which otherwise would never have been known. 

And what say you for the culture — its breadth, its depth, its 
purity, its genuineness. Is it likely to promote the cause of 
knowledge, of patriotism, of domestic virtue, of holy religion in 
life and works? 

If you have followed these exercises with as quick an ear, as 
appreciating a mind, as lively an interest as I have, you can now 
answer that question. The tree has shown its blossoms and its 
fruits — are the former only beautiful, and the latter bitter? 

Surely these exercises have revealed a comprehensiveness and 
a thoroughness of instruction, a degree of attainment, and a mod- 
esty of bearing seldom combined. They who have traced before 
us here this evening, with steady hand, the succession of "historic 
cities" from buried Nineveh, through ruined Athens and the lone 
mother of dead empires, to the teeming abodes of our republican 
glory ; or, treading the " starry path to the Temple of Truth," 
have reviewed the great results of Herschel or of Franklin ; or, 
alive to the glories of mechanical skill, have pointed out with ac- 



106 REMARKS AT THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE 

curacy what has been accomplished by their countrymen's enter- 
prise ; or have touched with caustic finger the enervating follies 
of the day with equal judgment and wit; or embodied in poetic 
numbers, with accuracy and ease, at once poetic thought and 
graceful pleasantry — are no smatterers in knowledge ; and any 
lady in the laud may well be proud of daughters who can write 
their native tongue with simplicity and grace characteristic of the 
compositions we have heard; and if the hand of the master may 
have purified them from occasional errors, the tone and cadence 
of the recital, the enunciation and pronunciation are at least their 
own, and the first were just and spirited, and as to the latter, if 
there was more than one word mispronounced, my ear was not 
quick enough to catch it. 

Not only were Milton and Byron aptly quoted by some, but 
the tone and style of sentiment pervading the productions re- 
vealed the influence of such companionships. 

Nor are knowledge and intellectual culture all, but these, the 
future matrons of the republic, even now give evidence of fitness 
for their high mission as prophets of patriotic inspiration to the 
3'oung men of the land; for who did not hear in those glowing 
words on the "March of Mind" the tramp of patriotic hosts fired 
by their enthusiasm in defense of the republic? And when, with 
kindling eye and earnest voice, she devoted to execration the crav- 
ens who should allow the fabric of our liberties to be torn asun- 
der, did we not see in her all of that matron who bade her son, 
going forth to battle, return with his shield or upon it ? 

Nor did the sterner virtues exclude the womanly virtues ; for 
what do we recognize as worthy of the woman in every station, 
from motherly tenderness and domestic duties up to their source 
in religious inspiration and trust in God, which was not comprised 
in that touching portraiture of " The True Woman," which fitly 
and beautifully closed this farewell to girlhood ? 

That outpouring of pious feeling expressed in words what the 
sacred anthems which every voice joined to swell had sent in 
music to the skies. 

They were the infidelity inculcated by our public schools ! ! 

They are infidel, because the clergy are excluded from incul- 
cating sectarian dogmas, just as our republic is anarchy, because 
kings are not invited to teach us civil obedience ! 

The objection comes from no republican lips. It reveals a 



EASTERN FEMALE HIGH SCHOOL OF BALTIMORE. 107 

profound ignorance of the foundations of our republic. They 
who utter it have yet many a fathom deep to penetrate ere they 
sound the depth of the American principle of the freedom of 
thought, the freedom of religion, the right of every citizen to un- 
checked freedom in forming his religious opinions, and the deep 
interest of the state in securing him not only freedom, but the 
means of enlightened judgment, and that greater, deeper, and ho- 
lier faith in the sufficiency of every enlightened mind to read for 
himself in the Word of God the will of God, whose practice is 
religion. 

We of America have our own peculiar mode of cultivating re- 
ligion as well as of guiding the state, and that is freedom. 

There are other methods which older nations have tried and 
still cling to, but we have discarded them; and they who assail 
our system would bring us back to those. It is well to know 
what they are. 

There is one which assumes the supremacy of the spiritual over 
the civil power; asserts the right of the Church to define and of 
the state to enforce the true faith; prohibits free judgment, or 
punishes its errors as crimes. 

This was the law of old Europe; the principle has never been 
abandoned ; the perversity of modern times has greatly limited 
its enforcement. It is still the law of Italy, Spain, and Turkey. 

There is another which professes toleration for all opinions, de- 
clares the state the patron of all the sects whose ministers it pays 
and controls as a part of the machinery of government, and seeks 
the quiet of the state in the stagnation of opinion and the heredi- 
tary descent of creeds. 

This is the system of England and Prussia, and, since the Eev- 
olution, of France and Belgium. It is the boasted system of tol- 
eration. 

There is a third system which asserts the right of each man to 
absolute freedom in belief and worship, which denies to the state 
and to the Church all power to coerce in matters of religion, which 
declares absolute freedom of thought the only security for religion. 

It is not toleration, for that implies indulgence, a privilege which 
may be regulated or revoked. It is freedom of the individual in 
matters of religion. 

It denies to the state all power over it except the necessary right 
to determine the limits of the domain of conscience and the state. 



L08 REMARKS AT THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE 

This is oui American freedom of religion. 

It proclaims to every conscience freedom for its worship, but 
not freedom to control any other conscience, nor to exclude any 
other conscience, young or old, from seeking in its own way its 
own satisfaction. It does Dot recognize in the parent any more 

than in the stale any right, to 0061*06 the convictions of the ohild, 

to exclude itffrora the light, to impair its freedom in matters of 
religion. On the contrary, it pledges to all alike, of every ago, 
equal freedom; offers to all the moans of thought and education; 
but forces none, and allows none to be forced, either into dark* 
uess or light 

It is the profound idea of the American people, which those 
not roared under its influence find it diffioult to conceive. It is 
peculiar to this people. It is OUT principle, and wo alone profess 
it, and we alone practice it : we alone have staked the very ex- 
istence of the government on its truth. We have boldly released 
religion from the control of the state, and the state from the con- 
trol of the Church, and the people from the control of the clergy; 
declared not merely the right, but the duty of all men to worship 
God according to their own conscience, and offered to every hu- 
man being the freedom and the means of SO doing, with a firm 
eonvietion that God has conferred on every mind power to un- 
derstand his duties toward llim not less than toward his neigh- 
bor, that each human being has within him the capacity for him- 
self to learn the path of duty from that book which God gave to 
be the guide of all men, ami not merely to teach the clergy to 
guide them. The Ameriean principle is not neutrality between 
religion and irroligion, between faith and infidelity. It is not 
merely abstinence from state control in affairs of religion, leaving 
the people to the power and control of the clergy or of the Church. 
On the contrary, the American people, by their laws and Constitu- 
tions, every where avow themselves for religion ami against irre- 
ligion. They every where assert the freedom of each conscience 
as well from clerical as state control, the capacity of each man for 
himself to determine his religious condition, and they deny the 
right, not merely of the state, but of the Church or the clergy, to 
dictate his belief and exact conformity to their rules. 

This is the logical consequence of the freedom of speech and 
of the press, the freedom of thought and religion as expressed or 
implied in our laws; and it is illustrated by every statute-book. 



EASTERN FEMALE HIGH SCHOOL OF BALTIMORE. 109 

and l>y every Constitution in the United State:-:, not merely in the 
freedom they assert, but in the bulwarks they every where throw 
up for it; protection against not merely the power of the state, 
hut the undue spiritual influence of the clergy and the Church. 

Nor do the American people content themselves with barren 
declarations. Every where; the public schools attest then- efforts 
to make freedom of thought ami religion not merely the right, 

hut the habit of the nation. The State throws Open the field of 

knowledge, and declares the right of every one freely to enter 
and enjoy its fruits. Strange and inconsistent would it be if, 
where every science and all history find a roice, and the children 
are to he trained for the, public service, the Bible alone were silent. 
The common fountain of every creed,in either version a fertile 
source of religious life, the American people see no departure from ' 

their ideas of religious freedom in opening if: simple text in the 

public schools. If add;-: no sectarian exposition ; that it leaves to 
the. discretion of the parent. It listens to no sectarian complaint 
at its admission ; for it is asserting the right of the child to the 
means of forming its own judgment, and freedom of thought is a 
farce without knowledge. 

Do any maintain that ignorance is betterthan knowledge with- 
out sectarian teaching? Then the American people thinl. other 
wise. They can regard no such protest without abandoning the 
holy cause of live instruction, without surrendering their faith in 

the sufficiency of every mind to learn the path of duty in the 

Word of God. A right to deprive children of all instruction not 
sectarian is not a right of conscience in the American sense, and 

they who fin t declared the principle may well be allowed to con- 
strue and apply if. As well elevate absolute ignorance to the 

dignity of a religious dogma, and in its name call on the state to 

close the public schools, [fthe interests of .any sect suffer by 
fr< e invei tigation, it is its misfortune, but confers no right to keep 
men in ignorance; for the state asserts the right of freedom of 
thought and religion against all who impeach it — as a right of 

man against the arrogant usurpations of those who would rule 
them. 

Far from admitting the right of any one to object to free in- 
struction, the principle of freedom is asserted in opposition to that 
very assumption. It is to elevate to the dignity of a religious 
right the very power over the human mind against which we 



HO REMARKS AT THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE 

protest, and which drove our fathers into exile. As soon suspend 
the Habeas Corpus Act that some sect may perform the religious 
duly of coercing its members. As soon fail to punish those who, 
in the name of spiritual discipline, imprison a citizen of the re- 
public, or devoutly burn a witch or a heretic. If the state yield 
the freedom of instruction to one sectarian prejudice, it must yield 
it to all ; and that is to abandon the education of the children of 
the state for the education of the children of the sects by the sects. 

Nay, more, it is an abandonment of the right of the people to 
freedom of thought, of opinion, and of instruction ; for the state 
yields to the sectarian only because he denies the right of the 
state to teach any thing he disapproves. It is a confession that 
there is something which the people have no right to know — at 
least without its antidote. Our principle is the right of each in- 
dividual to know all things, to prove all things, and to hold fast 
what to him seems good. 

If nothing can be taught which any sect would rather not have 
taught, narrow indeed would be the Held. There are few on 
whose history there is no blot, and scarcely one which, left to 
itself, would not tear out some page of history, expunge some 
scientific truth, or close some department of discovery. How 
many would protest against geology, because they fear it conflicts 
with the books of Moses? One sect might insist that Newton's 
system of the heavens be excluded, or taught merely as a hypoth- 
esis and not as a truth, because they think the Bible teaches that 
the earth is stationary and the sun moves ; or others exclaim 
against a book on moral philosophy, which teaches the freedom 
of the will — in conflict with their views of predestination taught 
in the Bible. While one may object to classic authors, because 
in conflict with Christian morals, another will ostracize half of 
English literature by referring to the Index Expurgatorius as the 
criterion of the lawful ; and the Atheist may join the chorus of 
complaints for the invasion of the rights of conscience, and insist 
that the name of God shall be suppressed, or taught only as a 
myth. 

The state asserts the right of her children to judge of all these 
things fir themselves — to know the evidence on which they rest. 
It teaches no dogmas, to be received on authority blindl}-, but it 
aspires to place in every hand the means of judging everything; 
and while it will enforce or teach no creed or worship, it will rec- 



EASTERN FEMALE HIGH SCHOOL OF BALTIMORE. 1X1 

ognizc no right in any one to exclude any department of knowl- 
edge from the teachings of the public schools. The people re- 
serve to themselves the sole right of defining the limits of the 
domain of conscience and of the state, to be determined by the 
common conscience of mankind, and in the honest purpose of 
promoting human freedom. 

The people must adhere to this free system of state education, 
or abandon the education of the people of the Church. 

All history can not show the mass of any people ever educated 
by any Church. Schools have been frequently recommended, and 
sometimes established under the shadow of the Church, but they 
have never gathered within them the mass of the children of the 
people; they have been partial, exceptional, inadequate — a part 
of the Church machinery, and never dedicated to freedom of 
thought; and the mass of every people remained in ignorance till 
America set the example which churchmen now carp at. 

They who would know what education under Church auspices 
is can learn it in Italy, or England, or Spain. Let them who are 
in love with it.adoptit. For ourselves, we glory in having both 
proclaimed the principle and perfected the system of free instruc- 
tion. 

And if, the purpose being the same, the objection be varied, 
and the system be impeached for irreligion because no creed is 
taught, then the American people reply religion is one thing and 
creeds arc another thing. The republic cherishes religion ; it has 
no concern with sectarianism but to see that it docs no mischief. 
It remembers it rather as the instigator to strife than to love, the' 
cause of wars and bloodshed, the fruitful source of heart-burnings 
and alienation among fellow-citizens — the opposite in all things 
to that religion which is pure, and peaceful, and gentle, which is 
the inspiration of public virtue and the best guardian of the pub- 
lic peace ; and thus remembering the historic character of relig- 
ious sects, it has no interest in promoting either at the expense of 
the other, and will not subsidize universal war among them by 
recognizing them as elements in the adjustment of its system of 
public schools. 

The American system proceeds on the assumption of the ca- 
pacity of each man and each woman to learn the will of God from 
the Word of God. The American people place their faith, not in 
teachers of religion, or in speculative or traditional creeds, but in 



112 REMARKS AT THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE 

the nature of man and the good inspiration of God. They spread 
the Bible before the youthful mind, and when it is read they close 
it ; and they look for spiritual nourishment to flow as freely from 
it to the open mind, as the milk from the mother's breast to the 
infant that clings there. They think that the sun is visible with- 
out telescopes, and that the colored glasses of sectarian instructors 
may impair, its glory, but can not add to its brightness or its 
warmth. They cherish religion such as it blazes from the heav- 
ens, such as it is reflected from the Bible, shining info the heart 
of man from either source, needing no creed to define it, allowing 
no sectarian anathema to limit it — cheerfully greeting it wherever 
the life exemplifies the spirit of the Bible, however the. disciple 
may stammer in the recital of crabbed catechisms or stumble in 
the darkness of theological metaphysics. And while the Ameri- 
can people profess to be a religious people, and would shrink with 
horror from any system which encouraged irreligion, yet they re- 
member that their republican government has been assailed on 
the same ground. They feel that their system of liberty and re- 
ligion must flourish or fall together; and whether, they now flour- 
ish or languish, they will judge only by the fruits. We are no 
wiser than the apostles, who knew that their religion was univers- 
al, because they saw its fruits among the Gentiles who professed 
it. We do the like. We point to the churches that every where 
decorate the land — the thousands who daily crowd them for hum- 
ble worship — to the spontaneous and free reverence for things 
divine, which bows every head and bends every knee before the 
Supreme — to the perpetual fountain of pious teaching which flows 
from the mother's lips — to the orderly march of free millions, with 
no guide but their conscience and the law, in peace and order — to 
the overflowing charities which every where attest the reality of 
Christian love — these things arc the proofs of the religion which 
the American people cherish ; and they are the proofs that it docs 
flourish and not languish. We think these better tests than a 
theological inquiry as to how many believe in predestination, or 
transubstantiation, or episcopal succession. 

This is the reply of the American people to those who impeach 
their system for infidelity. To these results they point to prove 
that religion flourishes better when free than when controlled — 
under the air of heaven than in sectarian hot-houses or under the 
deadly shadow of state protection, and the reply is decisive. 



EASTERN FEMALE HIGH SCHOOL OF BALTIMORE. Hg 

They respect the ministers of religion of every sect — seek will- 
ingly and freely their spiritual aids and consolations ; but they do 
not regard them as either the sole or the best instructors of youth, 
whether in matters of religion or matters of science. They have 
a firm conviction of the sufficiency of laymen to regulate affairs 
of education, and they prefer to confine the minister to the service 
of the altar. They think the less their children are taught why 
they turn their backs on each other when they pray to the same 
God, the better for them. 

They look to other sources of religious instruction for the young, 
which they are careful to provide. 

They think the first lispings of infant piety are best poured 
forth at the mother's knee ; that the first inspirations of spiritual 
truth flow best from the mother's lips ; that the earliest guides in 
religious conduct are the living examples of the mother's walk 
and conversation, aided by the free Sunday-schools conducted by 
the people, and not by the clergy. They think that the best in- 
struction for a religious life flows directly from the Bible, which 
God gave to guide men, and which He therefore supposed them 
able to understand. This the American people spread before the 
minds of the young, without note or comment, and in either ver- 
sion, that its teachings, instilled in earliest youth, may influence 
the life and conduct long ere the maturity of mind tends to theo- 
logical speculations, and instruct and comfort thousands who may 
never comprehend a single sectarian theory. 

But this free system can exist only where cultivated and pious 
mothers preside over the family. That is the purpose of this be- 
neficent institution at whose celebration we have been this even- 
ing assisting, and these maidens are its flowers, woven by its hands 
into a crown worthy of the brow of Eve. 

These maidens are the missionaries of the state. 

Yes, it is to you, future mothers of the republic, that its destinies 
arc committed. This high cultivation has been bestowed on you, 
not to promote vanity or frivolous dissipation, or the rivalries of 
social ambition, but to make you the lights and guides of the next 
generation in the paths of religious and civil prudence. You are 
not called to mingle in the turmoil of public life, nor to assist at 
the wrangling of synods, nor to flame in the front of war, but you 
are the sent to outwatch the stars for the safety of the life of the 
republic, the virtue and truth, the patriotism and devotion, the re- 

H 



114 REMARKS AT THE COMMENCEMENT, ETC. 

ligion and morals of those to whom the destinies of the republic 
are committed — the people who will constitute and rule it. Your 
life and station find their fittest symbol in that glorious path 
which spans the arch of night, thick sown with blazing stars, but 
more beautiful still by the clouds of trembling light amid which 
they shine — the blended beams of innumerable but invisible stars, 
deep hidden* in the recesses of the heavens till explored by the 
great astronomers of modern times. It is not yours to glitter in 
the eye of the world as those leaders of the starry host which first 
arrest the gazer's eye, or guide the mariner on the deep ; but, hid- 
den within the heaven of your homes, invisible to every eye but 
those who penetrate there, the pathway of the republic will glow 
with your light, a visible halo from invisible stars, whose glory is 
not to be seen, but to wrap all things else in your light. 

So, when in after ages the eye of the world shall marvel at the 
dazzling destinies of the republic culminating in splendor and 
triumph, let them be taught that it is not the glory of industry, 
or arts, or arms, but the light which the matrons of a nation shed 
around its path. 



THE EEOPENING OF THE SLAVE-TRADE. 

The case of the slave-trader Wanderer, and the harangues of Messrs. 
Spratt, of South Carolina, Yancey, Euffin, and other extremists in the 
South in favor of repealing the United States enactments against the 
slave-trade ; the exhibition, at an agricultural fair in South Carolina, of 
an " imported laborer of African origin," to whose owner was awarded 
a silver prize ; the serious discussions as to the necessities of the South 
for a class of " immigrants from Africa*' suited to her climate and pro- 
ductions, and the boldly-declared doctrine of the " divinity*' of slavery, 
and the rightfulness and Christian duty of its extension and increase, 
had begun to awaken the fears of even the least thoughtful. 

In August, 1859, Mr. Davis wrote for a daily journal the following 
article on the reopening of the slave-trade. 

It is time that the insidious advances toward this nefarious and 
unchristian traffic which a large and influential party are making 
should attract the attention of Maryland. Her people should not 
be taken unawares, as they were by the repeal of the Missouri 
Compromise under the same false pretexts. The {reparation of 
men's minds for the grand end has already begun, either con- 
sciously or unconsciously. 

The grand and humane policy of Maryland — the colonization 
scheme — is insinuated to have failed. The ideas and sentiments 
from which it springs are said to have been shown false. Jour- 
nals talk of the great revulsion of public opinion among the lead- 
ing men of England on the question of emancipation, which has 
no existence out of their imaginations, to lend respectability to 
the change of men's opinions of the honesty, morality, humanity, 
and policy of the slave-trade, already begun, and which they wish 
to foster. While they do not venture to recommend the reopen- 
ing of it, they suggest that it exists now, in fact, more than ever, 
though we are deprived of its benefits. 

That the fleets of England and the United States do not pre- 
vent or suppress, but aggravate it. That interest which would 
be equal to humanity in securing good treatment to the candi- 
dates for civilization and heaven, is now expressed by terror, and 



116 THE REOPENING OF THE SLAVE-TRADE. 

converted into cruelty by the fear of capture, the ignominy of 
exposure, the menace of punishment. It is plausibly argued that 
the removal of the cruisers would remove the terrors of the trader, 
and the captive, no longer a source of danger to the thief, would 
become an object of interest. 

Good food, water, and air, all the delights of a pleasure voyage, 
would obliterate the ill renown of the "middle passage;" and, 
after a charming voyage of a few days or a week, the neophytes 
of Christianity would land on the celestial shores of the New 
"World disenthralled from barbarism, and, under the training of 
Christian masters and ministers, learn at once the way to cultivate 
cotton and the Christian life. The question of morals is passed 
in silence. These ingenious gentlemen assume the existence of 
the trade, and their philanthropic purpose is to ameliorate the con- 
dition of the slaves. 

In aid of this argumentation, others insist strenuously on the 
entire unfitness of the negro for freedom ; for of course, if he is 
nowhere lit for freedom, he must be slave to somebody, and if 
any body's, why not ours, the Southern fire-eaters will in due 
time exclaim. 

Of course, this view is expressed with great moderation, great 
candor, great independence — nay, philosophically, simply as an 
ethnological question ; or piously, as an attempt to purchase the 
divine counsels touching the negro race, and to become the hum- 
ble instrument of His will, which, of course, can be only good! 
His will is learned, not in the Bible, but in the British West 
Indies. The great English experiment of emancipation is loudly 
proclaimed a failure. The opinion of English statesmen is said 
to have changed. The very emancipationists are claimed as con- 
verts to the system they ignorantly overthrew. Statistics are 
paraded to corroborate the proof of failure, and adjective is piled 
on adjective to describe how, in the lowest deep of slavery, a low- 
er deep of ignorance, idleness, worthlessness, was found in freedom 
by the English experiment. 

If the writers draw no conclusion, every reader can draw it 
without much trouble. It is an ally to the argument of the uni- 
versal unfitness of the negro for mere personal civil freedom any 
where ; that is, the mere exercise of the right in subordination to 
the laws of the land to dispose of his own labor, to enjoy the fruits 
of his own toil. 



THE REOPENING OF THE SLAVE-TRADE. H7 

It is the exact course of reasoning which was heard in the late 
Slaveholder's Convention in Baltimore. The resolutions proposed 
to be adopted by the extreme men of that Convention were mere- 
ly the formal expressions of the above reasoning, yet no such con- 
clusions are hinted at, but the dissertations usually close with 
some general and edifying remarks about the inequality of the 
races, the absurdity of attempting to give negroes equal privileges 
with whites, about which nobody differs, and could have been de- 
duced from much more accurate premises than those employed. 
But the mind of the reader is sent far beyond the conclusions of 
the writer. 

If we turn our eyes southward, we shall get more light there. 
Men's opinions are more pronounced. It is now a political ques- 
tion. Large masses of the Democratic party openly avow them- 
selves in favor of reopening the slave-trade, and greater multi- 
tudes sympathize with them, but prefer the safer course of insinu- 
ation and circumvention. They assume the Southern disguise 
which cheated the country into the repeal of the Missouri Com- 
promise. They suggest, assert, maintain the unconstitutionality 
of the laws prohibiting the slave-trade. They do it under divers 
pretexts, but all end in one point. Some merely wish the laws 
repealed, not to reopen the trade, but to leave it to the several 
states to say whether they will allow it, just as Congress was to 
allow each Territory to decide on slavery for itself; others think 
the laws ought to be repealed because the penalty of death is too 
severe to be enforced against the innocent, mild, and moral cap- 
tains and crews of the slavers ; while others, more practical and 
more logical, say, if the laws be unconstitutional, there is no need 
of a repeal — they are nullities. Juries, grand and petit, may and 
must disregard them. 

The courts have no power to enforce unconstitutional laws — 
nay, the courts are not even to decide the question of constitu- 
tionality ; it is too plain for question ; each juror must decide for 
himself. Grand juries must refuse to find indictments for slave- 
trading, though the facts be admitted ; petit juries must acquit 
any one indicted by the usurpation of a grand jury. We have 
seen within the last year both grand and petit juries in Southern 
states disregard both evidence, and law, and court, and refuse to 
find indictments, or, where found, acquit the prisoner in the face 
of uncontradicted testimony of the officers of the navy making the 



118 THE REOPENING OF THE SLAVE-TRADE. 

arrest, and of the jail full of stolen negroes — for the laws arc un- 
constitutional. The latter is now the view prevalent among the 
Democrats of the South. The majority in some states arc openly 
and avowedly of that opinion. In other states the minority arc 
loudly in favor of it, and the majority is silent and sympathizing, 
but restrained by prudence until after 1860. In some states it is 
the question underlying the apparent topics in contest, as in Texas. 
Mr. Stephens more than insinuates his inclinations toward those 
views in his late speech. In Mississippi most of her public men 
have made profession of their faith. The question is upon us, Is 
it the great Democratic bait to catch the South in 1860, or to concen- 
trate the /South for an act of rebellion? The repeal of the laws is 
the legalization of the slave-trade. No law affirming its legality 
is needed. It revives by the simple repeal, under the law of na- 
tions. The Democratic party is now ready at the South to make 
l ho issue — repeal or rebellion. It touches their honor, they say, 
as they said the Missouri Compromise touched their honor. The 
laws arc a slur on their institution and on their ancestors, there- 
fore they will have repeal or blood. "What does Maryland say ? 



THE QUESTION IN THE TERRITORIES.— 
UNION OF ALL OPPOSED TO THE DEMOC- 
RACY. 

During 1859 Mr. Davis had been active in endeavoring to brins 
about a union or fusion of the two parties — the Republican in the North- 
ern and "Western, and the American and Union parties in the Middle 
and Southern States — equally opposed to the continuance in power of 
the two factions which, having coalesced under the name of Democratic, 
had, in consequence, carried the election of 185G, and now claimed, un- 
der the usual penalty, to be allowed to carry the election in 18G0. 

In various letters to individuals and to journals, written during that 
year, he set forth his views as to the necessity, the expediency, and the 
feasibility of such a union ; and he was unremitting in his efforts to 
bring about such a state of opinion as should induce those parties in op- 
position to agree upon a candidate for the presidency in 1800 upon his 
past record and position, and without any platform or declaration as to 
legislation in regard to slavery in the Territories. lie was in favor of the 
nomination, in that way, of Judge Edward Bates, of Missouri ; and he 
afterward endeavored (in 18G0, at Chicago) to induce the Republican 
party to offer him as a candidate who could be accepted and voted for 
by Southern Whigs and the opponents of Southern pro-slavery Democ- 
racy. 

In November, 1859, Mr. Davis addressed to the Editor of the New 
York Tribune the following letter upon this subject : 

Sir, — The Eepublican party is the expression of the Northern 
opposition to the extension of slavery into the Territories. 

All the Territories are now by law, and in fact, free, for there 
are slaves in none. No law establishing it or regulating it has 
been passed by Congress, nor by any Territorial Legislature to 
which Congress has delegated the power; and the act of New 
Mexico, being in conflict with the decree of Mexico abolishing 
slavery, is for that reason void. 

In this state of the case, your Eepublicans insist on declaring 
it the right and duty of Congress to interdict slavery by law in 



120 THE QUESTION IN THE TERRITORIES. 

a platform, and to make the enactment of such a law a cardinal 
point of policy in the canvass of 1860. 

Others, who see in such a policy an end of every hope of union 
with the Southern opposition, and a strong improbability of unit- 
ing the Northern opposition in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and 
Indiana for the election of a President in 1860, think that the 
election of-a President by the opposition, holding the views of 
Mr. Clay on that question, and in character above the necessity 
of pledges or platforms, insures every thing that is necessary to 
satisfy reasonable men to arrest permanently the slave propaganda. 

To obtain security by legislative restriction, the Republicans 
must elect a clear majority of both House and Senate, and the 
President, and hold them long enough to change the Supreme 
Court. The Republicans must first get a clear majority of the 
whole House of Representatives. Not merely an opposition ma- 
jority against the Democrats, but a Republican majority against 
both the Northern Democrats and the whole body of the vote 
from the slaveholding states ; and that Republican majority must 
be more radical than any ever seen in the House of Representa- 
tives. 

They must also have a like majority in the Senate, where the 
free states lose their numerical advantage, and where any two free 
states in Democratic hands prevent the jDOssibility of success. 

They must at the same time have the President, for a Demo- 
cratic President would veto any bill excluding slavery from the 
Territories. 

They must, after all those unprecedented conditions, still, in 
addition, either reorganize the Supreme Court, or hold all that 
power long enough to change it by appointments not Democratic. 
This is plainly so ; for, as now constituted, or as hereafter filled 
by any Democrat, any law of Congress restricting slavery will be 
declared void. 

This can not be avoided by districting the country and assign- 
ing to the free states a number of judges proportioned to their 
population, for any Democratic President can find discarded anti- 
Lecomptonites enough to fill the bench from every district for a 
full generation. 

Neither can this be avoided by any law, for the appointment 
of the judges must remain in the President's hand, according to 
the Constitution. 



UNION OF THOSE OPPOSED TO THE DEMOCRACY. 121 

But if such a reorganization were attempted, it would so rouse 
or frighten the timid or Conservative men as almost inevitably to 
restore the Democrats to power. 

The Eepublicans, then, to restrict slavery by law, must have 
every department of the government, and hold them long enough 
to reorganize the Supreme Court, and still hold power to prevent 
the work being undone. 

Such majorities they have not now even in the House of Rep- 
resentatives. The Republicans have no majority at all, not even 
with the eight anti-Lecompton men, for any such purpose. In 
the Senate they are in a great minority, and the President is 
against them. 

Is there any prospect of their ever within this generation hold- 
ing such power under the condition above framed? 

No prudent man can say there is ; and if not, then the attempt 
to adopt a restriction law is wholly futile. No matter how much 
men may wish it, the thing is, humanly speaking, impossible. 

But, on the other hand, the election of a President in 1860, of 
itself, silences and arrests the slave propaganda, if he be elected 
by a combination of the opposition in a manner so free as to in- 
sure a permanent union of the Republican and American voters 
in the Northern and "Western states. 

We say the President alone is sufficient, and without him every 
thing else is perfectly worthless. 

"With the President an adverse majority in Congress is worth- 
less. 

The President appoints the Territorial judges and removes 
them at his pleasure, as well as the United States attorneys, and 
the marshals who summon the juries, and the governors of the 
Territories, and these constitute the Territorial governments in 
fact. 

The President appoints the judges of the Supreme Court, and 
between now and the end of next term a majority of those judges 
now on the bench must, in the course of nature, be substituted by 
others. 

The Dred Scott case is a Democratic case, decided by Demo- 
cratic judges, resting on Democratic party political views of the 
Constitution and laws, and inspired by Democratic prejudices and 
sentiments. It would have been rendered by no judge whom 
either Harrison, or Taylor, or Fillmore would have appointed. 



122 THE QUESTION IN THE TERRITOEIES. 

It would have been rendered by any Democratic judge appointed 
by any Democratic President in the last ten years. 

Now the old Whig view of the relation of slavery to the Terri- 
tories was this — that it existed only by virtue of the positive law 
of the land on which it was attempted to be enforced. So that, 
if forbidden by Congress, or if neither forbidden nor sanctioned 
by Congress, it did not exist ; and if Congress has no power over 
the subject at all, then that of itself made all the Territories nec- 
essarily and forever free, till they both became states and adopted 
slavery. 

Now suppose such a man as all the opposition could unite on 
— a man holding Mr. Clay's views, and honest enough to trust 
without the distracting pledge of a platform. 

He will name judges for the Territories holding like constitu- 
tional views with himself. 

Mr. Clay, e.g., thought the Mexican laws excluded slavery, and 
a judge so thinking would declare the law of New Mexico, or any 
other establishing or so regulating slavery, void. 

The United States attorneys and marshals would be instructed 
to institute no prosecutions, and to enforce no laws of that char- 
acter. 

In civil suits a master would have no remedy against his slave, 
for he could institute no suit against him. The marshal and his 
force would not lend the public force to secure his authority over 
a slave voluntarily carried into the Territory. 

No indictment would be preferred for any rescue of such a 
slave ; and if the negro were not interfered with by the people, it 
would be merely a question between the claimant's power to guard 
and his power to go off. 

If a civil suit for a rescue were instituted, a judgment might be 
brought to the Supreme Court. 

In such a case, the Supreme Court, as now constituted, or as 
constituted by any Democrat, will decide for the master ; but as 
constituted by any President elected by the opposition, the deci- 
sion would necessarily be against him. 

Three new appointments will change the complexion of the 
court. There are more than three very old men whose places 
must be filled by the next administration, and that will determine 
the complexion of the court for the next generation, in all proba- 
bility, if made by a Democrat. 



UNION OF THOSE OPPOSED TO THE DEMOCRACY. 123 

Now, to accomplish a rehearsal of the Dred Scott folly no pledge 
is needed, no platform, nothing but a President holding Mr. Clay's 
views. Judges appointed by such a President will instantly re- 
pudiate that ridiculous farago of bad history, worse law, and Dem- 
ocratic partisanship. 

The decision was made only because the people had been quar- 
reling for twenty years, and the Democrats had been allowed to 
hold the President because the people could not agree to turn 
them out of the presidency, and, like the Democrats, quarrel about 
matters of policy while sheltered against disaster by the power of 
the President. 

"We repeat that, without the President, every thing else is 
worthless ; with the President, every thing else follows ; for the 
President gives all the offices at home and abroad ; thus his will 
inspires every act of the government, even the very courts, on po- 
litical and constitutional subjects. 

A majority in Congress with him consecrates his will and that 
of those who elect him as law, and he executes and construes it in 
the spirit of its authors. 

His veto protects his policy against an adverse majority in both 
houses, and gives his friends time to rally and restore their ma- 
jority in the next Congress. 

He is omnipotent against every thing but a two-third's vote of 
both houses, so that his administration may be censured, but can 
not be arrested by any less number by law. 

The possession of the President, except under great abuse of 
power, draws to it generally the majorities of both houses, from 
the natural tendency of the people to make a complete govern- 
ment while they are about it. 

But, with the President alone in such hands as we have indi- 
cated, the slave propaganda is forever broken down. 

It can pass no slave code for its Territories. 

It can not repeal the laws against the slave-trade. It can not 
repeat the scenes of Kansas, for President Pierce could at any 
moment have ended those invasions and those frauds by the ap- 
pointment of his marshals and governors, or, if necessary, by the 
troops. 

Thus paralyzed, the black Democrats could not agitate the 
country ; the progress of population would settle the condition of 
the Territories for their transformation into states without any 
farther legislation. 



124 THE QUESTION IN THE TERRITORIES. 

On these principles the opposition can unite, for they are sim- 
ply a cessation of the propaganda. They only assume that who- 
ever the opposition may agree on will be one holding Mr. Clay's 
views, and known to do so, without any pledges or questions. 
Such a person only can unite the opposition. 

Such an administration inaugurated in 1860 gives the Con- 
servative' body of the people — now unhappily divided on the is- 
sue, shown above not to be material, i. e., not necessary to be 
raised in order to accomplish all which moderate men ought to 
want, and do want — the possession of the government for a gen- 
eration at least, if wisely conducted. 

On the other hand, if the opposition fail in 1860, they may roll 
up the map of the United States for twenty years. 



ON THE RESOLUTIONS OF CENSURE BY THE 
MARYLAND LEGISLATURE ON ACCOUNT 
OF MR. DAVIS'S VOTE FOR MR. SPEAKER 
PENNINGTON. 

At the second session of the Thirty-fifth Congress (December, 1858, 
to March 4, 1859) Mr. Davis spoke against the proposed resolution to 
impeach Judge Watrous, of Texas (which was rejected), and on the bills 
for the Indian, Civil, and Naval Appropriations. 

In the month of October, 1859, occurred the outbreak at Harper's 
Ferry, and attack on and capture of the United States Arsenal there by 
John Brown and his associates, who attempted also to cause and lead an 
insurrection of the negro slaves. The excitement caused by this invasion 
of Virginia by twenty men was only less in certain parts of Maryland 
than the terror it occasioned in the state first named. It was instantly 
asserted every where as the deliberate act of a great political party in 
the North, and for which they were responsible, and was held forth as 
the convincing reason why the only safety of the South was in the party 
whose excesses had provoked it. 

Notwithstanding the efforts of the missionaries who preached this new 
doctrine in Maryland, Mr. Davis was again elected, for the third time, in 
November, 1859, to the Thirty-sixth Congress, which met on the 5th of 
December. There were returned to the House one hundred and nine 
Republicans, one hundred and one Democrats, twenty-six Americans, 
and one Whig (Mr. Etheridgc, of Tennessee). 

For the speakership, at first Mr. Bocock was supported by the Demo- 
crats, Mr. Sherman by the "Republicans, and Mr. Gilmer and Mr. Boteler 
by the Americans. A resolution was introduced by the Democrats, in 
hopes of compelling the Americans to side with them, that " no indorser 
or advocate of the 'Helper Book' (The Impending Crisis of the South, 
by II. R. Helper, of North Carolina) was proper to be placed in the chair 
of the House." This was aimed against Mr. Sherman, whose name ap- 
peared in a list of those who recommended the distribution and reading 
of that volume. The discussion was long and violent, and after many 
ineffectual efforts, and the withdrawal of Mr. Sherman and others, on 
the 31st of January, 18G0, Mr. Davis, when his name was called, voted 
for Governor Pennington, a member from New Jersey. Governor Pen- 
nington was a Whig, who had been elected as a Republican, and who 



126 ON THE KESOLUTIONS OF CENSURE 

had been supported as their candidate for the speakership by the Repub- 
licans only when they found it impossible to elect one of their straitest 
sect, and " an indorser or advocate of the ' Helper Book.' " This vote 
gave to Mr. Pennington one hundred and sixteen votes, within one of the 
required number. This was secured next day, February 1, by the arrival 
of Mr. Briggs, and thereupon Mr. Pennington was conducted to the chair. 

There was a furious clamor raised in the Legislature of Maryland, then 
in session at Annapolis, and attempted to be raised among the people of 
the state, and of the city of Baltimore especially, upon the announcement 
of the vote cast by Mr. Davis for Mr. Pennington. 

The most abusive articles were printed in the daily papers of Balti- 
more ; insulting and threatening anonymous letters were sent to Mr. 
Davis, anil violent efforts made to hold him up as " a traitor to the South, 
and renegade to the political, commercial, and social interests of Balti- 
more." 

In the Maryland Legislature enough members were found of the party 
which had sent Mr. Davis to Congress, and who had been elected from 
their own counties partly through his efforts, to join with the pro-slav- 
ery Democracy in denouncing this vote, by resolutions declaring that he 
had therein misrepresented the sentiments and feelings of the state. 

After these resolutions had been presented to the House of Represent- 
atives, Mr. Davis took occasion, on the 21st of February, 18G0 (the 
House being in Committee of the Whole on the State of the Union), to 
set forth his opinions of them and their contrivers and supporters in the 
following speech : 

Mr. Chairman, — The honorable the Legislature of Maryland 
has decorated me with its censure. It is my purpose to acknowl- 
edge that compliment. 

It is long, sir, since the party which now controls the Legisla- 
ture of Maryland has been so fortunate as to have a majority in 
both its branches, and it has so conducted itself that it is proba- 
ble it will be long ere again it succeeds in getting that control. 

If one may judge from the course and conduct of that body, 
the gentlemen who compose it are perhaps more surprised at their 
present power than their opponents. They do not appear to be 
less bewildered or more to have changed their original nature 
than Christophcro Sly, when waking up, after his debauch, in the 
nobleman's chamber, dazzled with the unaccustomed elegance 
which surrounded him, he began to question himself thus : 

" Am I a lord? and have I such a lady? 
Or do I dream ? or have I dream'd till now? 
I do not sleep ; I see, I hear, I speak ; 



BY THE MARYLAND LEGISLATURE. 127 

I smell sweet savors, and I feel soft things ; 
Upon my life, I am a lord indeed, 
And not a tinker, nor Christophero Sly. 
Well, bring our lady hither to our sight : 
And once ayain, a pot o' the smallest ale." 

Sudden elevation has never changed the character of the per- 
son accidentally raised to a position he was never intended by 
nature to occupy ; and those who imagine it ever can may free 
themselves from that delusion by looking at the Legislature of 
Maryland. That majority, which now presumes to represent the 
people of Maryland, are as much out of place in her legislative 
halls as was Christophero in the lordly chamber; and they retain 
and reveal their natural instincts and ability as did Christophero 
his preference for a pot o' the smallest ale. 

There is no department of legislation to which, in the brief pe- 
riod of their power, they have not applied their fingers, and it 
would be doing them injustice to say that there is any they have 
adorned. 

Greatly deficient in that first quality which constitutes the leg- 
islator — sound practical common sense — they abound in that 
genius of ignorance which so amazed and delighted Montesquieu's 
Persian in the Parisian professors — a genius which enabled them 
to undertake to practice and teach, with the utmost confidence, 
arts and sciences of which they knew nothing. 

Inexperienced in the forms of legislation, it was certainly pru- 
dent that they should be attended in the caucus, where, instead 
of the committee, their laws are matured, by learned attorneys, 
not members of either House, for else their blunders might betray 
their ignorance ; yet, in spite of this wise precaution, this Legisla- 
ture has worthily earned for itself a place beside that lack-learn- 
ing Parliament where Lord Coke says there was never a good 
law passed. 

Not elevated to the full sense of the dignity and responsibility 
of their high place by the great memories which surround them 
in the State House where daily they meet — where once the great 
Congress. of the Ee volution sat, and where George Washington 
surrendered his sword, that the law might thenceforth reign — the 
caucus is the Legislature, the Legislature the recording clerk for 
the dictates of the caucus ; debate is silenced and consideration is 
banished. At a suggestion from partisans out of doors, the sacred 
rights of a great city are sacrificed ; every responsibility surround- 



128 ON THE RESOLUTIONS OF CENSURE 

ing legislation is gone ; and the result has been such a series of 
legislative measures as will, perhaps, revive in the memories of 
the people of Maryland the fading sense of the greatness of the ca- 
lamity inflicted upon them when Democrats control a majority in 
both branches of their Legislature. 

Since, sir, they have seen fit to honor me with their censure, it 
is fit that this high and honorable body should have the means a 
little more in detail of appreciating the weight of that censure. 

Ambitious of the reputation of Justinian, and not enlightened 
by the great jurists which surrounded his throne, the General 
Assembly of Maryland, in the first few days, not of their consult- 
ation, not of their consideration, but of their session, adopted, 
without reading it, and in profound ignorance of its provision, a 
code defining the rights of person and of property of every citi- 
zen of the State of Maryland, and a great part of the residue of 
the brief period assigned them by the Constitution has been occu- 
pied in repealing and altering the code they had just adopted. 

Anxious to overrule the popular will and touch the fruits of 
political success, where political success is not likely to be attain- 
ed by the will of the people, they have been exceedingly desirous 
to empty some of the offices which, in Baltimore, were filled by 
the popular vote; and evidence having been taken in contests 
between members of the Legislature and persons claiming their 
seats, the honorable the committee of the body of which I am 
speaking, so cognizant of the laws of the land, so aware of the 
rights of justice, and so anxious to give them full effect, allows 
that evidence, taken behind the backs of gentlemen whose offices 
are contested, to be put in against them, upon the witnesses 
merely identifying their depositions formerly taken. Perhaps 
they were conscious, Mr. Chairman, that some witnesses can not 
safely be resworn after the lapse of a reasonable time. 

In the midst of the excitement in the country upon the Negro 
Question, it is not surprising that they have some men among 
them anxious to follow the deplorable example which has been 
set recently elsewhere, shocking to the sensibilities of the great 
mass of the people of Maryland, of reducing into slavery the men 
that our fathers freed. That such a measure is now depending 
before that Legislature, and receiving such consideration as it can 
give to any thing, instead of having been instantly rejected, or 
leave to bring it in refused — this, sir, would be cause of great sur- 



BY THE MARYLAND LEGISLATURE. 129 

prise in any other Legislature assembled in Maryland. But, sir, 
I fear that nothing but the unanimous shriek of indignation which 
rung from one end of Maryland to the other averted the danger 
of the passage of some such despotic and oppressive measure, and 
one seriously and rashly unsettling the industrial interests of 
Maryland. 

From these few circumstances, perhaps, we may begin to divine 
something of the character of that honorable body and the scope 
of its legislative sagacity. They are still more careful of South- 
ern rights. They boast themselves their sole guardians in Mary- 
land. They are diligent and not unsuccessful students of the de- 
bates of this House. They were smitten with, admiration of the 
resolution offered — and so long debated in this House — by the 
honorable gentleman, my friend from Missouri [Mr. Clark]. A 
bill was pending before the Legislature of Maryland for the pur- 
pose of disfranchising a great city refractory to the Democratic 
yoke. Certain respectable attorneys, knowing as much of con- 
stitutional law as is comprised in the art of special pleading, as- 
pired to apply these microscopic principles of their favorite art to 
the construction of the Constitution, and the result of that novel 
application was a bill which annulled by evasion, and repealed 
by direct enactment of the Legislature, some of the most funda- 
mental provisions of the Constitution itself. Accepted at the 
hands of its legal originators by the caucus — if ever read, yet 
never understood by the majority in either House — it was about 
to receive the confirmation of the Legislature, when a grave omis- 
sion was discovered. It said nothing about the Negro Question. 
That was beyond the province of special pleading; and the Leg- 
islature rashly tried their 'prentice hand on a proviso. They sol- 
emnly incorporated in the bill the following clause : 

"Provided, That no Black Republican, or indorser or supporter of the Helper 
book, shall be appointed to any office under the said board." 

Upon its passage, the yeas and nays were called and recorded : 
but I should not perform a grateful task were I to rescue their 
names from their native oblivion and spread them on the face of 
the debates of this House. 

The proviso was the fit cap and bells for such a bill. Its pro- 
visions deprived a great city of their constitutional right to self- 
government by a flagrant usurpation. It was fit that the men 
who were ambitious of the honor of passing that act should like- 

I 



130 ON THE KESOLUTIONS OF CENSURE 

wise place in the bill the measure of their capacity, by enacting 
what they, with the same breath, condemned. Perhaps the most 
obnoxious portion of Helper's book is the proscription of fellow- 
citizens for their opinions on slavery ; and the proviso, for the 
first time in American legislation, excludes by law from a munic- 
ipal office all the members of the most numerous political party 
in the United States by their party name, and because of their 
political opinions ascribed to them by their enemies. The pro- 
viso does not confine its exclusion to the approvers of Helper's 
work — itself sufficiently ridiculous — but deprives the honorable 
gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Corwin] and the Speaker of this 
House, and the governor of almost every free state, and over 
a million of voters, from all chance of promotion in the Police 
Department of Baltimore. Possibly the people might not have 
selected them, but the Legislature apparently feared that their 
Board of Commissioners might. 

Their vigilance having been once awakened, they were not 
content with having thus protected the institutions of the people 
of Maryland against the wiles of this great Northern party by 
excluding them from the high and lucrative position of policemen. 
They were called upon shortly afterward to pass upon another 
measure — a city railroad for Baltimore — a dangerous contrivance 
of Northern ingenuity, which would cover with its network of 
tracks that great city, on whose cars thousands of people might 
come in contact daily with the conductors and directors, and by 
them, if not sound, the subtle poison of anti-slavery sentiment 
might be diffused through all the streets and alleys of Baltimore, 
without any body being the wiser. That sagacious and learned 
body, the Senate, having hurried through the code for the pur- 
pose of getting at those things which touch the vital interests of 
the country, having before them this bill for the inauguration of 
that great modern convenience in the city of Baltimore, thought 
that there likewise they should protect themselves by law against 
this poison in the atmosphere. And therefore it was provided, 
and now stands as a part of that bill, 

"That no Black Republican, or indorscr or approver of the Ilelper book (laugh- 
ter) shall receive any of the benefits and privileges of this act, or be employed in 
any capacity by the said railway company." (Renewed laughter.) 

I want honorable gentlemen upon this side of the House, the 
Helperites as well as others, to know, that when they pass home 



BY THE MARYLAND LEGISLATURE. 131 

through the city of Baltimore they must be prepared, at the car 
doors, to deny their political principles, or lose the lightning train. 
(Laughter.) Disappointed office-seekers here can find employ- 
ment there only by apostasy, and secret trusts alone can secure 
Black Republican capital in this lucrative investment. 

Sir, in the course of a few days there was before the Legislature 
another bill for the purpose of endowing an agricultural society 
for the state. An energetic, but not discreet representative of the 
dominant party rose and moved to apply this proviso to that bill. 
We all know that contamination does not spread so rapidly in the 
rural districts as in our great cities, and some legislator, more sa- 
gacious than his brethren, reflected that there are Black Republi- 
cans who raise Morgan horses, and Durham cattle, and Southdown 
sheep, and Alderneys, and that occasionally a Black Republican 
invents a plow, and that these things lessen the burden or enhance 
the profits of agricultural labor, and in singular contrast to the 
rest of their conduct, in a lucid interval, they actually voted down 
the proviso ! 

But the Senate, having at this point made themselves, as the 
Frenchman would say, suspected, in spite of their earnest and 
disinterested guardianship of Southern institutions, even at the 
expense of making themselves ridiculous, the House of Delegates 
next assumed the guardianship of the representative upon this 
floor. They had passed a resolution, prior to the election of 
speaker, which was intended to condemn beforehand any vote 
which should not be for some one of the honorable gentlemen 
from the Democratic party. I knew it was aimed at me ; for they 
knew that, highly as I respect those gentlemen — eminently fit by 
knowledge and experience for that position as I know many of 
them to be — entire as is my confidence in their personal honor, to 
the extent of trusting my fortune, my life, and my honor in their 
hands, yet I did not consider them safe depositors for any of the 
political powers of this government, and that all they could do 
would not make me waver one hair's breadth from what they 
knew was my firm resolve. 

But it is unfortunate that the gentlemen upon that side of the 
legislative body are more devoted to study the Cincinnati plat- 
form than Blair's Rhetoric or Whately's Rules of Logic, and they 
became afflicted with that entire incapacity of saying any thing 
which has not two meanings which so singularly characterizes the 



132 ON THE RESOLUTIONS OF CENSURE 

authors of that remarkable platform. They moved a resolution in 
such ambiguous terms that my honorable friends in the Maryland 
Legislature thought it was a condemnation of the gentlemen on 
the administration side of the House for not having elected the 
gentleman from North Carolina, for whom I cast my vote so per- 
severingly and so fruitlessly. I had intended to waive the benefit 
of the ambiguity. I intended to have responded to them in the 
sense of the gentleman who moved them; but events were so rapid 
that, before I could have an opportunity to express my opinion 
of them, I was overwhelmed and oppressed by another. The ele- 
vation of the gentleman from New Jersey to the speaker's chair 
instantly revived all their earnestness for the protection of South- 
ern rights. 

My vote recalled to them that they were committed by what 
they had said before to follow it up with an explicit condemna- 
tion of the act which had now been perpetrated. And thereupon 
the honorable the House of Delegates of Maryland thus resolved: 

"Resolved, by the General Assembly of Maryland, That Henry Winter Davis, act- 
ing in Congress as one of the representatives of this state — " 

Sir, it is greatly to be regretted that those gentlemen do not act 
in the. Legislature of Maryland as representatives of Maryland — 

"by his vote for Mr. Pennington — " 

They did not. know his Christian name — 

"the candidate of the Black Republican party — " 

Think of it, Mr. Chairman ! spread upon the statute-book of 
Maryland forever ! "of the Black Republican party — " 

' ' for the speakership of the House of Representatives, has misrepresented the senti- 
ment of all parts of this state, and thereby forfeited the confidence of her people." 

I respectfully tell the gentlemen who voted for that resolution 
to take back their message to their masters, and say that I speak 
to their masters face to face, and not through them. Sir, it has 
always been the striking and marked peculiarity of that party 
which now accidentally, and only temporarily, predominates in 
the councils of Maryland, that they will allow no opportunity to 
pass of what they call " indicating their entire fealty to the 
South ;" and that, sir, always consists in exciting sectional strife, 
in mooting matters which men ought not to argue, in libeling 
their neighbors, in endeavoring to make them hateful and disgust- 
ing to their fellow-citizens, in giving an advertisement to the 
whole country that every body that is not a Democrat is an Abo- 



BY THE MARYLAND LEGISLATURE. 133 

litionist ; and that, if any fanatics shall see fit at any time to come 
within the limits of a Southern state for the purpose of shaking 
and unsettling the solid foundations of society, there would be 
found men who, if they feared to join them, would yet sympa- 
thize with them. Their whole policy is to poison the minds of 
our people against every man not a Democrat in the free states, 
to inspire them with distrust, apprehension, and terror, to teach 
them to look on the accession to power of any one called by the 
name of Eepublican as not merely a change of power from one 
to another political party, differing in principle and policy, but 
equally loyal to the United States, but as not far removed from 
such oppression and danger as to furnish just cause of seeking 
revolutionary remedies. Their hope seems to be to retain power 
by the fears of one half the people for the existence of slavery, 
and of the other half for the existence of the Union. Agitation, 
clamor, vituperation, audacious and pertinacious, are their weapons 
of warfare. Of this spirit the Legislature of Maryland, as now 
constituted, is the incarnation. It stands the embodiment of 
that terrific vision of the Portress of Hell gate, who, to the eye of 
Milton, 

"Seemed woman to the waist, and fair, 
But ended foul in many a scaly fold 
Voluminous and vast — a serpent armed 
With mortal sting ; about her middle round 
A cry of hell-hounds never ceasing barked 
With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung 
A hideous peal ; yet when they list would creep, 
If aught disturbed their noise, into her womb 
And kennel there, yet there still barked and howled 
Within unseen." 

And they, as false to their mission as the Portress of Hell 
to hers, stand ready, for the purpose of retaining their hold of 
power, to let loose on this blessed land the Satan of demoniacal 
passion. 

And then, sir, in the midst of these more noisy, boisterous, and 
disturbing elements, there is a certain number of small, shriveled, 
restless beings, incapable of wielding the arms of logic or of rea- 
son, yet skillful to scratch with poisoned weapons. Of such are 
the honorable gentlemen who contrived the resolution. 

They supposed that I was so weak before my friends in Mary- 
land that they could take from me the confidence of that constitu- 



134: ON THE RESOLUTIONS OF CENSURE 

cucy that has stood by me through good report and through evil 
report, while it blew a storm as well as when it was calm. Sir, 
I represent My constituents ; and I know the people of Mary- 
land even beyond the limits of my constituents better than these 
dabblers in eternal agitation ; and I say that, right or wrong, wise 
or unwise, honest in its motives or unfaithful in its motives, that 
vote of mine is, to-day, not only approved, but honored and ap- 
plauded by every man whose opinion I regard. (Applause in the 
galleries.) I say that now, this day, I am stronger in my district 
and in the State of Maryland, in any appeal I may see fit to make 
to the people, on my vote for speaker, than all the banded body 
of the Legislature bound into one man. And, sir, unless I am 
greatly deceived by the press of the Southern opposition, the 
American members of the Legislature are as little in sympathy 
with their political friends of the South as they are with the peo- 
ple of Maryland. 

Why, sir, what are the circumstances of that election ? I, sir, 
have no apologies to make. I have no excuses to render. What 
I did, I did on nry own judgment, and did not look across my 
shoulder to see what my constituents would think. I told my 
constituents that I would come here a free man, or not at all ; and 
they sent me here on that condition. I told them that if they 
wanted a slave to represent them, they could get plenty, but I 
was not one. I told them that I had already passed through more 
than one difficult, complex, dangerous session of Congress ; that I 
had been obliged, again and again, to do that which is least 
grateful to my feelings ; to stand not merely opposed to my hon- 
orable political opponents, but to stand alone among my political 
friends without the strength and support which a public man re- 
ceives from being buoyed up breast-high by men of like senti- 
ments, elected on like principles, and who, if there be error, would 
stand as a shield and bulwark between him and his responsibility. 
I foresaw then, exactly as it resulted, that the time would come 
when I would be obliged again to take that stand ; and I wanted 
my people to know it, so that if they chose to have another one, 
who would go contrary to his judgment, and bend like a willow 
when the storm came, they might pick him out, and choose the 
material for their work. 

Mr. Chairman, they sent me here, and I have done what I 
know was my duty. Sir, it is my proud satisfaction at this mo- 



BY THE MARYLAND LEGISLATURE. 135 

ment that, having given no side-wind reasons, having made no 
apologetic statement, spontaneously, without asking, I know this 
day that my constituents approve what I have done ; and that, 
if not the fit reason for my doing so, is at least a consolation after 
doing it. 

The honorable gentlemen of the Legislature presume to know 
better what my constituents think than I do. They possibly will 
find out that they do not know so much about the honorable gen- 
tleman who occupies the speaker's chair as my constituents know. 
The objection made to me in the Maryland Legislature by the 
mover of one of the resolutions was, that I had not voted for my 
friend from North Carolina. The rapidity of the transit of infor- 
mation from Washington to Annapolis is apparent to any one. 
The diligence with which these self-constituted judges of my con- 
duct make themselves acquainted with it, adds greatly to the 
weight of their condemnation. The care with which they studied 
the code before its passage leads me to fear that they learn our 
proceedings chiefly from expurgated editions in their country 
newspapers, via Alleghany and St. Mary's. Not only no Demo- 
crat, but no American, could, or ventured, or cared to correct the 
blunder. 

Thus ignorant of contemporary events, it were unreasonable to 
expect them to know events twenty years old — to them a period 
beyond the memory of man or newspaper — the subject of tradi- 
tion merely. 

It is not to be supposed that they could identify the honorable 
gentleman who so worthily fills the speaker's chair with that 
Whig governor of New Jersey, whose broad seal was discarded 
by the Democrats of this House when they wished to usurp the 
speakership of the House, and had not the votes to do it without 
rejecting the votes of the New Jersey members. They did not, 
but my constituents do know that fact; and they think that his 
elevation is a righteous rebuke, after long delay, for that usurpa- 
tion. They know — though it can not be supposed the Legislature 
do — that the Governor of New Jersey of that day was a Whig in 
the day of Whig greatness. The gentlemen of the Legislature 
can not be expected to know, but my constituents know, that Gen- 
eral Taylor appointed to a high office, in his gift, the same dis- 
tinguished gentleman, and that, though the Senate of the United 
States unanimously confirmed him, he declined the honor. The 



<u 



136 ON THE RESOLUTIONS OE CENSURE 

gentlemen of this Legislature can not be expected to know that 
Millard Fillmore, whose name at this day, in Maryland, stands 
second only to that of the immortal Clay, appointed him likewise 
to another high and responsible office, which he declined to ac- 
cept. Perhaps his contempt for office excites their indignation. 
They, of course, can not be expected to know that the distin- 
guished gentlemen to whom I refer is a Whig in his politics, now 
called a Eepublican, in favor of the enforcement of every law 
that any Southern state has any interest in, and of that one in 
which Maryland, more than any other, has a direct and practical, 
not a political and party interest. The gentlemen of the Legisla- 
ture could not be expected to know — but my constituents know — 
that this honorable gentleman is sound on all those more practi- 
cal questions touching the protection of American industry and 
river and harbor improvements, in which they have so direct and 
deep an interest. They know full well that it is by the votes of 
such men we must secure the inauguration of that policy, so es- 
sential to the industrial interests of Maryland. 

The gentlemen of the Legislature may not know— but my con- 
stituents know — that, above and beyond all other things, the gen- 
tleman whom I aided in elevating to the chair is of moderate 
views, in favor of silence on the slavery question, of putting an 
end to the internecine strife of sections that has raged for years, 
and, therefore, of all men the man to sit in that chair — at once the 
symbol and the pledge to the country of the peace that is before 
us, if we will only not repel it. It is because my constituents 
know and approve these things that they approve my vote. 

I supposed that there would be clamor over that vote. I did 
not intend to trouble myself about it. I knew the quarter from 
which it was likely to come. I knew that the majority of the 
gentlemen of the Legislature would adopt some such resolution. 
I confess myself surprised that my own friends, excepting four 
of them, voted for it. I fear that in an evil hour some of them 
allowed themselves to be frightened. I suspect some of them 
were afraid that they should be called " Abolitionists." Subjected 
to the torture of voting against a resolution which was supposed 
to be in favor of Southern rights, or of deserting a friend, they 
could not be expected to regard justice to me rather than safety 
to themselves. So every man took care of himself. Some voted 
for the resolutions who went through their election on my shoul- 



BY THE MAKYLAND LEGISLATURE. 137 

tiers. They did not know that -when they saw away the bough 
between themselves and the tree they must fall. (Laughter.) 
But, sir, it was a curious scene, that vote. The clerk called the 
name of an American in the Legislature once, and there was a 
pause ; twice, and there was a shuffling ; thrice, and there was a 
hesitating response. Then there was a period of blessed repose, 
when certain Democratic names were called, and were responded 
to with that earnestness with which Democrats always respond 
when aiming a blow at a political adversary. Then some unfor- 
tunate Americans were called upon to vote. The gentlemen 
stood first on one leg, and then on the other, in sad doubt on 
which to rest; gentlemen looked over their shoulders to see if 
there were not some dust of a coming reprieve ; some rushed to 
inquire of friends whether they ought or ought not to vote for 
the resolution ; while there sat their inexorable and determined 
opponents, with their eyes glaring upon them and their mouths 
open, sure of their prey after the fluttering was over ; and in they 
went. (Laughter.) The scene I am sure I should' never have 
been able to describe had it not been for the torture and agony 
which certain honorable gentlemen upon the other side of the 
House suffered when called upon to cast a patriotic vote for my 
friend from North Carolina. (Renewed laughter.) Sir, I admire 
the audacity of the Maryland Democrat as much as I deplore the 
weakness of the Maryland American. 

Mr. Chairman, I know that I have to meet — and I shall meet 
with all equanimity — all the obloquy that is attached to the course 
that I have felt it to be my duty to pursue, and I know that, so 
far as I am worth pursuing — a gentleman in the Legislature had 
difficulties about passing the resolution for fear it should give me 
too much importance — so far as I am worth pursuing, I do not 
doubt that I shall be well hounded. I remember that a great 
many years ago, not this hall, but the old Hall of Representatives, 
was the scene of a great struggle, which excited the country at 
that day as much as the one through which we have just passed 
excited us in our day ; and I remember, sir, that there was an 
illustrious individual who there found himself bound by his duty 
to the country to depart from his personal preferences, and, to 
some extent, from his political friends, and to cast a decisive vote 
for John Quincy Adams, of Massachusetts, for President ; and 
from that day to the day of his death there was no time that the 



138 ON THE RESOLUTIONS OF CENSURE 

howl of "bargain and corruption" did not pursue him to his 
grave. Sir, I have sat at his feet and learned my political princi- 
ples. I can tread his path of political martyrdom. Before any 
cry of Legislatures or people I will not yield ; they may pass 
over my prostrate body or my ruined reputation, but step aside 
I will not to avoid either fate. I care not, sir, whether it be in 
one shape or another that the danger may come. I am aware 
that we all this day regard the Negro Question as that which is 
decisive, important, and controlling. There have been others at 
other times equally important, equally exciting, equally control- 
ling. There have been Legislatures that have been anxious to 
strike down a political opponent There have been timid constit- 
uencies who have deserted their representatives for serving them 
too faithfully ; there have been stormy constituencies which de- 
manded humiliating things of their representatives. The spe- 
cial trial of our day comes from the feverish excitement on the 
Slavery Question, and the despotic intolerance of any deviation 
from the extremest views of either side. For myself, sir, on every 
question I mean to assert my independence, awed by no authority 
into acts which I disapprove — 

"Non civium ardor prava jubentium, 
Mente quatit solida — neque auster " — 

no, sir, not even the south wind. Whether it relate to a matter of 
financial policy or to a matter of sectional strife, no man is fit for 
this place who is not willing to take his political life in his. hand, 
and, without looking back, go forward on the line of what he re- 
gards as right, and, sir, whether it relates to the material interests 
of my constituents, or to those great political interests which are 
supposed to be bound up with the existence of slavery in the 
slave states, I trust I shall never allow myself, by any clamor or 
by any storm, however loud or however fierce, for an instant to 
be made to veer from that course which strikes me to be right. 
I am not here merely as a member from the fourth congressional 
district of Maryland. I am not here merely to represent the resi- 
due of the State of Maryland. I am not entitled to consult their 
prejudices as only worthy of regard. I am bound to look to a 
wider constituency, to a higher dut}^. If my duty to that wider 
constituency can be made to promote the interests of my local con- 
stituency, then my duty to the two coincides. But, sir, in the 
great necessities of public life, there have been heretofore, and 



BY THE MARYLAND LEGISLATURE. IgQ 

there may be again, occasions on which I may be called upon, 
as other public men have heretofore been, to make the painful 
decision that the interest of the nation requires that I shall disre- 
gard the opinions, unanimous, firm, repeatedly expressed, of my 
constituency. I humbly pray that that may not occur, but that, 
if it do, I shall have strength equal to the occasion ; at least such 
now is my resolution. 

Mr. Chairman, I had intended, but I have not time, to speak to 
one or two other points. (Cries of " Go on !") I think that the 
spirit which lies at the bottom of th.e resolutions which the lower 
House of the Legislature of Maryland in an evil hour has adopted, 
is of sinister import to the people of this country. I wish, sir, I 
had time to develop how sinister it is. 

They were extraordinary circumstances under which the elec- 
tion of speaker took place, which is summarily condemned by 
that Legislature. We had met, and been struggling for eight 
weeks, I think. At the meeting of this session of Congress, an 
explosion of passion of revolutionary intensity — beyond any thing 
it has been my fortune to see here or to read of outside of the 
revolutionary assemblies of Paris — greeted us upon our advent. 
One great body of gentlemen, evidently deeply in earnest, how- 
ever much I may deplore that earnestness, and however much I 
may think them in error in their estimate of the causes of their 
indignation, manifestly felt themselves to be upon the brink of 
great, decisive, and revolutionary events. One portion of this 
House, day after day, branded the representatives of the great 
majority of the people of the free states as traitors to the country, 
instigators of assassination, bent upon breaking up and destroying 
slavery in the states, carrying into the midst of our families the 
torch and the knife of the assassin and incendiary. Great states, 
moved from their propriety, passed beyond what hitherto they 
had done, and adopted resolutions which, however moderate in 
their tone, looked revolutionary in their aspect, and must, in their 
execution, have been revolutionary. For the first time, I believe, 
in the history of the government, a great and patriotic state was 
so deeply moved as to be forgetful of that clause of the Constitu- 
tion which forbids the entering of one state into compacts or 
agreements with another, and to send one of her justly-distin- 
guished citizens to the capital of Virginia for the purpose of ar- 
ranging a common consultation among the Southern States — not 



140 ON THE KESOLUTIONS OF CENSURE 

one of those Conventions which from time to time have met under 
the usurped authority of a governor ; not one of those commer- 
cial conventions which from time to time have been the result of 
a movement on the part of a certain portion of the Southern peo- 
ple — but a mission assuming all the solemn forms of an embassy, 
speaking the tones of the last hour before the revolution breaks 
out, appealing to the people of Virginia, in their sovereign capa- 
city as represented in their Legislature, by reason of a melancholy 
event which had just transpired, to send delegates by law to a 
Convention of states which, if it did any thing, must assume the 
form and functions of that great revolutionary Congress which 
took the earlier steps to break the bonds that bound our fathers 
to the throne of Great Britain. 

I do not agree with those gentlemen as to the cause of that ex- 
citement. I profoundly regret the steps that those various Legis- 
latures thought fit to take, as much as I deplore the intense agi- 
tation of the popular mind which tolerated or favored their adop- 
tion. But, sir, I stand here sworn to support the Constitution of 
these United States — not of any other confederacy which a future 
sun may rise upon — to support the Constitution of these United 
States ; and, under these circumstances, was it to be expected, or 
did the people of Maryland expect, that their representative here 
should, when his vote would elevate to the speaker's chair a gen- 
tleman, personally and politically, in every way so far as I am 
acquainted with his character and previous conduct, a symbol of 
peace — of peace to those very states thafrwere so excited and revo- 
lutionary in their measures — that I should allow the opportunity 
to pass of placing that olive-branch where men all over this wide 
land could see it? Or, sir, to take another alternative, if the dire 
day must come that peaceful secession shall be attempted, and it 
shall be found that peaceful secession means the arrest of the Unit- 
ed States marshal in the execution of his office, the driving of 
the United States judge from the seat of justice, the taking pos- 
session of the Custom-houses of the United States, the arresting 
the execution of all the laws of the United States — sir, was it in 
accordance with my duty here to allow this government to be 
caught in circumstances so grave, in a crisis so imminent, without 
a House of Representatives competent to sanction measures which 
then might be necessary ? Was it not a still higher duty to avert 
the very possibility of collisions so disastrous by removing the 



BY THE MARYLAND LEGISLATURE. 141 

apprehensions which might precipitate them? And how could 
that be so well accomplished as by the elevation to the contested 
chair of a gentleman whose previous political relations, whose 
known character for moderation, whose opinions on the most 
vexed and delicate questions of an administrative character 
touching the sensitive interests of the slave states, whose gray 
hairs, crowning a long life of honor, all gave assurance to those 
who looked with undefined apprehension to a different result of 
the contest for speaker — that under his auspices there might be 
peace — that at least there is time for reflection — that at least there 
is an hour before strife, when men may pause and become cool ? 

The honorable the House of Delegates thought otherwise. 
Such considerations were wholly beneath their view — that anar- 
chy had better reign than that any one called by the name of 
Republican should be elected speaker; than that the people of 
Maryland should -see the sad example of the whole body of the 
Republican representatives uniting to elect a gentleman known 
and formally declared, in their hearing, to favor the enforcement 
of every law, and the protection of every interest they are repre- 
sented to be bent on destroying ; nay, for the overthrow and ruin 
of which their very party is pronounced a conspiracy. 

Sir, there is no act of my life I less regret, none more defensible 
on high and statesmanlike reasons, none where the event has more 
promptly indicated its wisdom. Even now its fruits are, if I mis- 
take not, visible. The people are relapsing into repose in the 
country. Chafed passions explode less violently in the House. 

I trust that now the calmer judgment of the other side of the 
House will modify their views heretofore expressed, and limit and 
soften the sweeping judgment which impeached a whole political 
party of conspiracy to promote servile insurrection. 

I think they will be inclined to take a somewhat different view 
of the origin, the character, and the scope of John Brown's crime. 

It was no invasion of Virginia at all, still less an invasion of 
Virginia by or from a free state. It was a conspiracy to free ne- 
groes, arrested in the attempt, defended with arms, stained with 
murder, and punished with death. It was a crime to be dealt 
with by judge, and jury, and sheriff. 

The utmost vigilance of two governments has failed to trace a 
single connection with any body of men in any state. Two of 
Brown's confederates were arrested in Pennsylvania without war- 



142 ON THE RESOLUTIONS OF CENSURE 

rant, and carried without a guard to jail in Virginia. His arsenal 
contained two hundred Sharpe's rifles and something over a 
thousand pikes ; his army consisted of about twenty men : such 
were the means provided by eighteen millions of people for the 
invasion of ten millions ; for, though rumor promised him succor, 
no one ever saw a body of men or a single man marching to join 
him or to rescue him. Not a slave joined him voluntarily ; not 
one lifted his hand against his master ; all were anxious to return 
to the bosom of their masters' families. 

Atrocious as was the crime, and great as is the cause I have to 
deplore some of the best blood shed, that crime has revealed a 
state of fact and of feeling, both among our own population and 
that of the free states, on which our eyes ought to rest with satis- 
faction in view of the future. 

It negatives the existence of any conspiracy against our peace 
in the free states of the Confederacy. Neither the plan nor the 
execution revealed any higher intelligence or greater power be- 
hind the crazy enthusiasts who acted in the tragedy. To lay this 
blood at the door of a great political party of our fellow-citizens, 
who now control the government of every free state except two, 
in spite of the indignant denial of all their representatives here, 
and without a particle of proof, in fact, is not reasonable. It is to 
call Dirk Hatterick's defense, in his lair, an invasion of Scotland ! 
It is to lay the bloody deeds of Balfour of Burleigh on the whole 
body of the Protestants in Scotland ! 

But the keenness with which gentlemen feel this crime against 
the peace of a slave state may well enable them to appreciate how 
the more aggravated events in Kansas inflamed the minds of men 
in the free states, and fired the fanaticism of Brown to the point 
of bloody revenge. 

That men and women of like mind, in whom, on one subject, 
the ideas of right and wrong are sadly disordered, sympathized 
with the convicts ; that some papers applauded his deed, and some 
pulpits echoed his eulogy, are certainly symptoms of no sound 
state of morals in the actors ; but they are of no political signifi- 
cance in the populous North. On this floor they have no repre- 
sentative. That bloody type of fanaticism is, of all things, most 
rare among the Abolitionists ; and they are a body of enthusiasts 
who have never, to my knowledge, had ten representatives in this 
hall. But to sympathize with a criminal, to pity a convict, to 



BY THE MARYLAND LEGISLATURE. 143 

consider the conviction an expiation, and the execution a martyr- 
dom, is too common at this day to excite surprise in any case. 
Even with the ministers of religion, the ascent to the scaffold is 
Jacob's ladder — the gallows is the very gate of heaven ; and the 
old formula of^iax et misericordia is changed for one in the spirit, 
if not in the words, of Edgewortb, " Son of St. Louis, ascend to 
heaven !" 

I dwell on these matters the more, because they have been made 
the occasion of exaggerated inferences and the proofs of unfounded 
fears, which a more thorough or a cooler contemplation of the 
manifestations of thought and feeling in our free American soci- 
ety will dispel. I seek for signs of peace. I will explore every 
region for ground of returning confidence. I think there is no 
ground for the excitement which has prevailed. I think the 
longer gentlemen look at the facts, they will the more surely see 
that their feelings led them to extremes which they will not be 
inclined to repeat. 

In this spirit, I feel sure they will now be inclined to accept the 
formal declaration of the gentleman from Ohio, who was the first 
candidate of the Northern opposition for speaker, at its full value 
and scope: 

"I say now, that there is not a single question agitating the public mind ; not a 
single topic on which there can be sectional jealousy or sectional controversy, unless 
gentlemen on the other side of the House thrust such subjects on us. I repeat, not 
a single question." 

He so spoke while a candidate ; and had he said exactly the 
opposite, there is not a gentleman on the administration side of 
the House who would not have rung it in the ears of his constitu- 
ents as the authorized and formal avowal by the Eepublican can- 
didate of all his enemies impute to his party. But, being a dec- 
laration of peace instead of one of war, shall we impeach its faith 
that our fears may not subside? or ought we not rather to read 
this text — authoritatively spoken in the presence of the gentlemen 
whose candidate he was, and who sanctioned it by their continued 
support for nearly two months afterward — by the light of that 
magnificent oration of his distinguished colleague [Mr. Corwin], 
which won the heart of every hearer by its genial and compre- 
hensive spirit, and inaugurated in this hall, after the silence of 
years, the example of great parliamentary eloquence ! 

These declarations are reiterated assurances that there is no in- 



144 ON THE RESOLUTIONS OF CENSURE 

tention of invading the rights or quiet of any slaveholding state ; 
that there is no design or desire to tamper with or trouble slavery 
where it exists ; that they are willing to let the subject alone, if 
others are willing to let things stand as they are. 

Are declarations like these to be encountered and outweighed 
by the irresponsible clamors of scattered newspapers, by trumpery 
resolutions at excited town meetings, or by the ambiguous, con- 
tradictory, and shifting platforms hastily contrived for an emer- 
gency, and then forgotten ? It was one of Mr. Calhoun's profound 
and sagacious remarks, that there was a strong tendency to con- 
found the machinery of parties with formal bodies known to the 
law, and to treat the latter like the former. The debates of this 
session have been one perpetual illustration of its truth. They 
have repeated here the discussions of the hustings, dealt here 
with the contrivances of party warfare, and invoked such proofs 
to repel and annul the formal representations of the constitutional 
representatives of the people touching their purposes. 

I invoke gentlemen to accept the declaration of the legal rep- 
resentatives touching the purposes of the people who sent him 
here to represent them in that very thing. Men may clamor, 
partisans may propose, papers may print a thousand things, and 
no one care to explain or contradict them; for no one is re- 
sponsible for them. Silence is no consent ; it is mere indifference 
or contempt. It is the conduct of the representative to which 
the people look when they would know if they were truly repre- 
sented, and it is to that representative we should look when we 
wish to know the spirit and policy his constituents contemplate. 

There will always be more or less of that vague dissertation on 
impractical theories, such as the possibility of property in man, 
or whether slavery be hateful to God, and the like, and those 
views will always have, as they have heretofore had, their eight 
or ten representatives on this floor ; but surely we can afford to 
leave such dissertations unanswered, and without an answer they 
will soon die out. Politically, they are of no decisive importance, 
and involve no such danger as to keep gentlemen always on the 
alert with a response. But the records display the purposes of 
parties in the government ; and if we there investigate the signs 
of the times, we will find, I think, that from 1855 to this time, 
there has been no single bill proposed contemplating a change in 
the condition of affairs touching slavery as it existed before the 



BY THE MARYLAND LEGISLATURE. 145 

repeal of the Missouri line. I had meant to develop that as a 
word of peace, but I have not time. The first controversy of 
the Thirty-fourth Congress related to the seat of the delegate 
from Kansas. The first bill was to repeal the laws of Kansas 
passed by the Legislature whose legality was contested. The 
next was Mr. Dunn's statesmanlike bill to reorganize the Terri- 
tory of Kansas. The third was to admit Kansas under the Topeka 
Constitution. The fourth was to abolish the existing laws, and to 
reorganize the Territory of Kansas, without one word of slavery 
on one side or the other ; and you know very well, gentlemen, 
that at the last Congress no proposition was entertained, excepting 
the question, which you argued and which we argued, whether we 
had a right to remit to the people the Lecompton Constitution, to 
be decided upon by the people who were to be bound by it. Up 
to this time, while there has been excitement at the North and at 
the South — while gentlemen have made offensive speeches here 
and elsewhere, there has been no measure of practical legislation 
proposed in this House that has not been defensive in its charac- 
ter ; not one that has looked beyond retaining the Territories free 
which were already free. 

We have, then, peace before us, if we will only accept it. The 
free states ask no new law. Their representatives tell us there 
will be no sectional questions mooted by them unless forced on 
them by others ; and if we close with such declarations in the 
spirit of the declaration of the honorable gentleman from Ohio, 
and of the patriotic speech of his distinguished colleague, we may 
banish from our minds those "gorgons, hydras, and chimeras 
dire," amid whose hideous forms we have so long pursued our 
weary way. 

K 



SPEECH BEFORE THE ELECTORS OF THE 
FOURTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT OF 
MARYLAND. 

Congress rose on the 25th of June, 1860, and all parties prepared for 
the great struggle in the approaching election for President of the United 
States. The excitement was greater than ever before throughout the 
country. The threats made in 185G, by the Southern States- rights 
Democracy, that the election of a " Black Republican" and sectional 
"Abolitionist" should be the signal for the secession of the South and 
the disruption of the Federal Union, were renewed with still more fre- 
quency and violence. The united and indivisible Democracy, after 
wrangling confusion and ineffectual efforts to unite upon a nomination 
at Charleston in May, had hopelessly split, and separated into the fac- 
tions headed respectively by Mr. Douglas and Mr. Breckinridge. Each 
of these fragments claimed to be the whole ; and each, as the exclusive 
and infallible authority, denounced and excommunicated the other half. 

The Convention of the National Union and American party met at 
Baltimore, and efforts were made to procure the nomination of Judge 
Bates, of Missouri, with a view to his acceptance also by the Republic- 
ans. But the candidates named were John Bell, of Tennessee, with Ed- 
ward Everett for the vice-presidency. It was afterward known that this 
position was assigned to Mr. Everett against his wishes, and he was with 
difficulty restrained from publicly disavowing it. 

At Chicago the Republican Convention came together in the highest 
spirits. It seemed now, after the Kansas and Nebraska inicpiities, and 
the openly-avowed intention of the Southern and Democratic parties to 
carry the blessings of slavery into all the Territories of the United States, 
as if the defeat of the party in 1856 had only rallied the resolution and 
moral sense of the North and West to the determination that the limit 
of endurance had been reached. It was confidently expected that the 
nomination there would naturally fall upon Ex-governor William II. 
Seward, the senator from New York, who had formed, organized, and led 
the great party of national defense in the North and West against the 
aggressions of the pro-slavery Democracy. His friends thought him en- 
titled to this nomination by great ability, by long experience in the pub- 
lic service, by the eminent positions he had held, and by the fact that he 
was its acknowledged chief, and the leader of its success. 



SPEECH BEFORE THE ELECTORS, ETC. 147 

But, through causes not necessary to be related here, the choice fell 
upon Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, a man then comparatively unknown 
outside of his own state, but who was widely popular there, and who 
had gained great reputation at home by his contests with Mr. Douglas. 
To him was added Mr. Hamlin, of Maine, as candidate for the vice-pres- 
idency. 

And now the contest began. In Maryland all four parties had some 
supporters ; but it was soon evident that the question in this state would 
be between Mr. Breckinridge, as the representative of the extreme South- 
ern and States-rights party, and Mr. Bell, who was a Southern Whig, 
opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska Bills, and of that party also which, 
although in fact opposed to the extension of slavery, wished to be "neu- 
tral,"' and was forced to be silent on that question. 

Mr. Davis took an active part in the campaign, and spoke before the 
electors of the Fourth Congressional District of Maryland as follows: 

Fellow-Citizens of Baltimore, — I regret that absence on 
public duty has prevented my being with you to celebrate the 
first note of triumph over the dissolution of the Democratic 
party. 

When the resolution of the American members of the Legisla- 
ture of Maryland, which has just been read to you, was passed, 
there was a Democratic party; one which was an "Old Bruiser" 
(laughter), as Mr. Thompson described Great Britain, roaming 
about the world, thrashing whomsoever it pleased, and shaking 
its fist in the face of all creation, domineering over every body, 
impudent, intolerant, and tyrannical. Noiv, the Democratic party 
is disputed between the warring elements, headed by Mr. Douglas 
and by Mr. Breckinridge. Who will have the honor of burying 
the body is not for us to determine. That will be left to which- 
ever of these two fragments shall turn out to be the stronger at 
the end of this contest, and in that way to arrogate to itself to be 
the sole, united, undivided, universal, national, omnipotent Demo- 
cratic party. (Laughter.) Our Democratic brethren last year, 
at Frederick, passed a resolution saying that upon the. integrity 
of the Democratic party depended the integrity of the Union. 
The party is gone — where is the Union ? (Laughter.) That 
where went its fragments must likewise go the fragments of the 
Union; and in accordance with the unfulfilled but anxiously-de- 
sired prophecy, one large portion of that party is now engaged 
perpetually in prophesying that if they happen to be defeated, 
that result will still follow. Gentlemen, it is matter of profound 



148 SPEECH BEFORE THE ELECTORS OF THE 

gratitude in my mind that, whatever else turn up, there is an 
end of that intolerable domination (applause) — than which none, 
without exception, can be worse ; than which none can be more 
inimical to the peace, the happiness, the integrity, and the great 
interests of this country ; than which none can ever push this 
country nearer to the brink of the precipice of disunion ; and the 
death of which confers more strength upon it than the death of 
all other political organizations that have ever existed. (Great 
applause.) 

It is time there should be a change. Maryland has thought so 
long, and she struggled long and heroically. She struggled under 
the heroic Scott, and failed. She struggled under the conserva- 
tive and statesmanlike Fillmore (great applause), and failed — 
failed, not by any fault of hers — failed, because there were " weak 
knees" elsewhere ; because men were afraid to meet the Demo- 
cratic party on its own ground, and hold it responsible for its own 
principles. Maryland alone, of all the states, kept her banner 
floating in the breeze, and stands to this day with her escutcheon 
more brilliant than any other in the United States (applause) for 
heroic devotion, for unshaken pluck, for perfect resolution to do 
as she pleases, and leave the rest of the country to do as it pleases. 
(Applause.) And now, under another leader, equally acceptable, 
of wider public experience, of old Whig antecedents, holding the 
most intimate relations to that great statesman to whom Mary- 
land was always only too proud to give her voice ; first in every 
department of the public service, true upon every great question 
that touches the real interests of the country, Maryland places the 
names of John Bell and Edward Everett before her people. (Tre- 
mendous applause.) And I take it that, deeply as she feels the 
necessity of a change, just so deeply and firmly is she resolved 
that for them, in November, her vote shall be cast. (Applause.) 
Whatever timid men may do elsewhere, whatever coalitionists 
and fusionists may do elsewhere, whatever doubt and hesitation 
may drive other people to do, let what will come, the vote of Ma- 
ryland will, in November, be cast for these two men ; and then 
Maryland will have discharged her duty, and her skirts will be 
free from the responsibility of whatever may occur. 

I know, fellow-citizens, the deep feeling which pervades you 
upon the condition of the national government. I know that 
you, as I do, think that the most important of all things is a 



FOURTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT OF MARYLAND. 149 

change in the government ; and, having come to that conclusion, 
that it is our duty to do our best to effect that change, in such 
manner as shall best secure the peace and the happiness of the 
country ; but that in no contingency, under no combination of cir- 
cumstances, for no purpose, are we to aid, directly or indirectly, 
in continuing in power those whom we now have a chance of 
ejecting. 

Wh} r is a change so necessary ? Is that Democratic party fit 
to be trusted with the power of the sword, which has allowed in- 
nocent and honest American citizens to be shot down in the 
streets of Washington by American soldiers? ("No, no.") Is 
it fit to be trusted with the sword, which has converted the army 
of the United States into a posse comitatus to enforce the service 
of process, and to subject the people of the Territories to military 
rule ? Are they fit to be trusted with the power of the sword 
who have wielded it so weakly in Utah, so illegally in Paraguay ? 
Are they fit to be trusted with the power of the sword who, for- 
getful of all the obligations of international law, have fired into 
the neutral vessels in or near the fort of Vera Cruz — an act so 
flagrantly illegal, that the courts of this country had to discharge 
the captured vessels as not legal prize ? Are they fit to be trust- 
ed with the power of the sword who have sought at the hands of 
Congress authority to use it, " whenever, in the opinion of the 
President," American citizens may be injured, or American in- 
terests may in his discretion require it, abroad, against any of our 
South American republican sisters ? Are they fit to be intrusted 
with the sword who desire the privilege, and have endeavored to 
get it, of protecting the transit routes, without the authority of 
Congress given at the particular time, but according to the mere 
will and humor of the President ? Are they fit to be intrusted 
with the power of the sword who have recommended to Congress 
that the President should be allowed, in time of profound peace, 
without any serious provocation, to take military possession of, 
and hold for an indefinite time, two great states of the Mexican 
republic — Chihuahua and Sonora? ("No, never.") Why, my 
friends, we had better at once give the whole power of war to the 
President. They have forgotten here all the limitations upon the 
executive power, and they are grasping at the right to wield the 
sword at the pleasure of the President, irrespective of the will of 
the people, whenever or wherever it may suit his discretion. 



150 SPEECH BEFORE THE ELECTORS OF THE 

Are they fit to be trusted with the direction of the finances and 
the commercial interests of the country who, in time of profound 
peace, have ran up a debt of some forty millions of dollars for the 
ordinary expenses of the government, rather than vary the tariff 
to supply its wants ; who have swollen its expenses during one 
year to nearly or over eighty millions of dollars ; who thought 
that the crisis of 1857 was a passing breeze, that ruffled the sur- 
face merely of our mercantile transactions — that terrific storm 
which turned up from its depths the sea of commerce, and left 
strewn all along the coast of this republic the fragments of our 
greatest fortunes ? 

Are they fit to be intrusted with the administration of the gov- 
ernment? Eead the Fort Snelling Eeport. Eead the Willett's 
Point Report. Eead the Covode Committee's Eeport. Eead Mr. 
Sherman's report on the navy yards and their corruptions. Eead 
of the political brokerage for contracts. Eead of the distribution 
among members of Congress of the patronage of the navy yard in 
Brooklyn, divided up between the Democratic Eepresentatives 
from the city of New York. Eead of the navy yard at Philadel- 
phia made a receptacle of illegal voters to return Democratic 
members to Congress. Eead of the reckless use of public money 
in the elections. Eead of the President himself directing the dis- 
tribution of the surplus compensation from one of the orinting 
departments, for party purposes among party papers, instead of 
recommending that the ratio of compensation should be reduced 
by Congress. 

Is any party fit to be intrusted with the government which not 
only thus abuses its powers, but asserts its freedom from con- 
gressional investigation into acts so detrimental to the public 
service ? 

Fellow-citizens, are these gentlemen fit to be intrusted with the 
government of a free republic after their conduct in Kansas, where 
they attempted to force by violence upon the people a Constitu- 
tion that they utterly repelled and abhorred ; then attempted to 
force through the two houses of Congress a law to make that Con- 
stitution the Constitution of Kansas, when its people had utterly 
repudiated it ; and then, when Kansas adopted another Constitu- 
tion, allowed it to lie for months upon the table of Congress with- 
out its having been taken up for action in the Senate ? Are they 
fit to be intrusted with the conduct of the government who could 



FOURTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT OF MARYLAND. 151 

so far forget the interests of the great agricultural classes as to 
allow to be vetoed (after voting against it in the lower House) the 
Agricultural College Bill of Mr. Morrill, of Vermont, which would 
have given the State of Maryland $150,000 to endow her new 
agricultural college ? Are they fit to be allowed to take care of 
the public interests who prefer to go on borrowing money day 
after day, and year after year, rather than remodel the tariff so as 
to protect all the varied interests of American industry ? (Great 
applause.) Even Mr. Douglas, in his campaign through Pennsyl- 
vania, found it essential to make a slight reference to the condi- 
tion of the revenue laws and the tariff as a condition precedent to 
asking a vote in that great State. And yet the Democratic ma- 
jority in the Senate allowed a tariff bill, passed by an overwhelm- 
ing vote of the lower House, to lie on their table for weeks and 
weeks, at any moment of which they could have taken it up and 
passed it, and thus restored to life and energy all the great mate- 
rial interests of the American republic. But there it rests, and 
there it is likely to rest. 

Fellow-citizens, these are the reasons why we want a change of 
government. These are the reasons why we want to oust from 
position those who have abused or neglected properly to exercise 
the powers of the government, and to place some gentleman there 
who will, in these respects at least, restore the government to its 
original basis ; restore to the commerce of the country the protec- 
tion of the Federal government ; give us the laws which are essen- 
tial to the prosperity of the industry of the country; execute that 
great and necessary improvement, the Pacific Railroad ; reinstate 
the system of improvements of rivers and of harbors throughout 
the whole country ; reorganize and recreate the navy, which has 
been allowed to rot to pieces under their neglect (applause); place 
the army upon a footing that will enable it to be the nucleus 
around which the volunteer sons of the republic may rally in the 
event of any great public necessity ; sweep out from office the 
flocks of " unclean birds" that have there been nestling for the 
last eight years (tremendous applause), and put in their places 
men who will honestly discharge their duties ; men who will hon- 
estly devote their time to the public interests ; men who will cease 
to strive over the matters which now divide the Democratic party, 
and will allow the voice of the people, calling on the government 
for the protection and aid to their industry which it requires, to 
be heard and answered. 



152 SPEECH BEFORE THE ELECTORS OF THE 

In my judgment, that never can be so long as the Democratic 
party is allowed to remain in power. So long as the Democratic 
party shall remain in power, so long there will be nothing but 
one eternal howl on the Negro Question to keep themselves in. 
There is no remedy for that old conflict except turning them out, 
neck and heels, " to get an airing," as a Virginia friend said ; and, 
1 lake it, when they are turned out, there will be a rest on that 
subject. 

Now, gentlemen, we in Maryland, and our true political friends 
every where, arc doing what in them lies to give to John Bell the 
glory of doing this. We make this effort, perhaps, under adverse 
circumstances. We have encountered adverse circumstances be- 
fore. We arc not to be discouraged by any odds that stand before 
us. We mean to cast our votes and to get our friends to cast 
their votes to secure, as far as in us lies, that great result. We 
trust that the division of the Democratic party may enable us to 
take great steps toward the accomplishment of that high pur- 
pose. We trust that they will be broken down in a great portion, 
if not in every one, of the Southern States. We trust that the 
State organizations will be transferred from the hands of the Dem- 
ocratic party to the hands of their opponents, and that again there 
will be an opportunity to hear the voices of Whig senators from 
the South debating in the Senate, as Mr. Clay and Mr. Berrien de- 
bated in former days. (Great applause.) 

Fellow-citizens, there are before the country four candidates for 
the presidency. I wish to call your attention to-night, without 
indulging in any bitterness toward either gentleman or cither 
party, to the real political opinions of all these four gentlemen, 
and I beseech your attention. I rise here this night not to add 
bitterness to any controversy. I will join my voice to no portion 
of any party, the tendency of which is to widen existing diversi- 
ties, to indurate existing prejudices, to influence existing passions, 
to mislead the public from the truth in order to gain a political 
advantage ; but, stating every thing fairly and fully, I shall leave 
you to form your own judgment as to how far different represent- 
ations are well founded, as to how far a different policy comports 
with the interests and peace of the republic, as to how far partisan 
influences or personal ambition may have tended to mislead gen- 
tlemen, or to cause them to mislead the public. I desire to mis- 
represent nobody ; and I shall not hesitate to state whatever can 



FOURTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT OF MARYLAND. 153 

be stated, fairly and freely, to set the opinions of every one of 
these four gentlemen honestly and truly before you, and then pos- 
sibly we shall be able to form a judgment of the propriety or im- 
propriety of certain modes of conducting the canvass, which I have 
observed in the newspapers to have become very common. It 
has not been my fortune heretofore in this canvass to have the 
privilege of addressing any of my fellow-citizens here or else- 
where. I have been engaged in arduous public duty assigned to 
me by those in authority, and I have had no opportunity even to 
attend a political meeting elsewhere ; but I have had my eye upon 
the current of public affairs. I have had my ear open to the 
echoes of what has been said elsewhere ; and while I allow no one 
to speak for me either here or elsewhere (great applause), and 
while I regard no insinuations from any quarter ("that's right"), 
I likewise am never afraid to say exactly what I think upon pub- 
lic affairs. I am no boy in politics, that I should be afraid to 
make a declaration of what I think. I am no child of yesterday, 
that I should be frightened by popular clamor out of telling my 
constituents what I know to be for their good. I am not eaten 
up by any personal ambition that would lead rac to hide, in any 
particular, any opinion of mine. (Great applause.) I have met 
the clamor of Democrats, in their highest rage, in the Hall of Rep- 
resentatives, when I dared to do what other men did not choo: 
to do (vociferous .cheering), and I am not afraid, before you my 
constituents, to avow that act, and to say that, were it to go over 
again, I would repeat it. (Renewed cheering.) I am not afraid 
here, this evening, before my fellow-citizens of Baltimore, to say 
that I do not hesitate now to proclaim before you all my opinions 
with reference to this pending controversy. If it is supposed that 
any amount of intimidation, or threat, or insinuation can make me 
say that I am willing to make any combination with a Democrat, 
to aid a Democrat to his election, I tell them they mistake the 
man. (Great applause.) I will do every thing that is honorable 
to elect John Bell ; I will do nothing to prevent the defeat of a 
Democrat by any body, (Renewed applause.) Aid the Demo- 
crats! (laughter) — so courteous — so forbearing — so respectful — so 
considerate of the "Know-Nothing" party! (laughter) — so ready 
to coalesce with " the enemies of civil and religious liberty !" 
(laughter) — so ready to shake hands with "bloody midnight as- 
sassins!" (laughter) — so content to accept our votes; so unwilling 



154: SPEECH BEF011E THE ELECTORS OF THE 

to reciprocate the compliment, as in the great contest of Fuller, 
Banks, and Richardson (applause) — so truthful in their represent- 
ations of my position in that great controversy, and so considerate 
in their expressions of opinion touching my conduct in the last 
great controversy ! Of course, gentlemen, I am a Christian man, 
and I ought to coalesce with them. (Laughter.) No; they may 
get aldng as they can. I see, gentlemen, and you see, every where 
in the newspapers, " the wing" of the Democratic party led by Mr. 
Breckinridge, and " the wing" of the Democratic party led by Mr. 
Douglas; but there is no "body" of it spoken of any where. 
Those " wings" arc good for flight, but poor for battle. The claws 
are not there. The beak is not them They are powerless — the 
shadow of what they were. Now this great Caesar, in its most 
miserable estate, shaking with its last ague, cries out, 

"Like a sick girl, 
Give mc some drink, Titinins !" 

(laughter); but, I take it, there will be some one else who will 
minister to its thirst in its dying hour than myself or my political 
friends. 

But, irentlemcn — to come back to plain matters — let us consider 
calmly the condition in which we are. Unfortunately, the great 
body of the opposition to the Democratic party, which concurs in 
every principle that I have stated to you, which is in favor of every 
measure that I have indicated as necessary for the public weal, the 
representatives of which have struggled through long months in 
Congress, shoulder to shoulder, for the purpose of accomplishing 
these things, have stood together in exposing the corruptions of 
the administration, and in rebuking its high functionaries by votes 
of the House — that great body of the opposition, representing the 
great body of the once powerful and dominant Whig party, is di- 
vided, like the Democratic party, irom top to bottom ; and this is 
the erreat misfortune of the times. Whose fault is this? I shall 
not stop to inquire. Whose misfortune? That of all of us. 
There arc those who seek to widen this division. There are oth- 
ers who know that no opposition administration can be powerful, 
enduring, and national, unless it combines both these elements in 
its support. If Mr. Lincoln shall be President, how can he carry 
on the government without the support of the opposition repre- 
sentatives from the South, in the Senate and in the lower Ilouse ? 
If John Bell shall be President, how can he carry on the govern- 



FOURTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT OF MARYLAND. 155 

mcnt with only twenty-three members in the LTousc and with two 
senators to support him ? 

Agreeing upon every measure of public policy, agreeing upon 
almost every vote they will be called upon to pass in either LTouse, 
touching the great interests of the country, how will it be possible 
for cither of these gentlemen to carry on the administration, with 
the friends of the great measures that they both must advocate, to 
which both arc committed, in virtue of having been Old Whigs, 
as well as in virtue of their present avowals, divided among them- 
selves? Will any body tell me? 

I say, then, if there is one thing to be struggled for more than 
another, it is the obliteration of the lines of demarcation ; it is the 
bringing together men who think alike upon the great public in- 
terests of the country ; it is, as far as possible, to push into the 
background, to silence forever, to put out of men's view, and (if 
God will only allow it) out of men's thoughts, the only clement of 
distraction of a national or party character, which prevents the 
organization of a great and powerful party, which can hold the 
government for a generation, if only the present causes of division 
can ever be gotten rid of. 

There arc those who wish to widen the division. My sense of 
public duties require me, first of all, to see how wide it is — whether 
it be a division of principle too wide to be bridged, or a division 
occasioned by temporary passions, and susceptible of adjustment, 
consistently with the honor and interest of every section. And 
if so, then I am for thai party really of tlic Union and of the Con- 
stitution — a party united and powerful over the whole republic — 
devoted to the interests of the whole country — which will inflict 
wrong or insult on the sentiments, the feelings, the rights, the in- 
terests of none. And I say that now, instead of attempting to ex- 
cite the passions, arouse the hostility, and cast violent imputations 
upon one great portion of the opposition now struggling against 
the Democratic party in the North, it would be wiser not to mis- 
lead the people too far, because there may be contingencies in 
which to have misled them may be dangerous. You can easily 
arouse the passions of men ; but when their passions are aroused, 
it is very difficult to calm them. You can easily excite the fears 
of men ; but when their fears arc excited, they are not in a condi- 
tion for calm conduct. You can very easily lash them into a 
fury, but then you can not control them. The representations as 



156 SPEECH BEFORE THE ELECTORS OF THE 

to the course of the canvass in certain portions of the United 
States do, in my judgment, in certain contingencies which are 
within the bounds of possibility, at least as the end of this political 
contest, tend to create a state of feeling in the public mind which 
may prove beyond the control of those who have lashed it into 
fury. To you, my fellow-citizens, to whom I am responsible for 
my p\iblic conduct, and to whom I am bound to tell the whole 
truth touching the affairs of the country, I desire to say what I 
think with reference both to the individuals and the parties that 
arc struggling for the supremacy. 

Yielding to none in devotion to the interests of the candidate 
whom my friends support, and whom I shall support — earnestly, 
and heartily, and resolutely — I am determined here, as I have 
been resolutely in the House of Congress, never for an instant to 
allow myself to join in a clamor which I know to be baseless, 
which I believe to be in a great measure dishonest, and which I 
am convinced is dangerous to the best interests of the country — 
(applause) — however certain portions of the opposition may, for 
local and temporary purposes, find it to their interest to exagger- 
ate the points of diversity, to keep up the sectional temper, to 
blacken their political opponents with virulent abuse, to make the 
people of the South believe that the North is filled with John 
Browns, to make them believe that the Republicans are not merely 
a political party, differing from you as the Democrats differ from each 
other, but that they arc traitors to the Constitution, hostile to your 
interests, bent on servile insurrection, endeavoring to invade your 
State institutions, and make your families insecure and your lives 
a torment — that is a policy to which I will never give my assent, 
and against which I have struggled always. It is a misrepresent- 
ation of the condition of affairs in more than one half of this coun- 
try, against which I feel called upon, by my highest duty here be- 
fore you this night, face to face, as I did in the House of Repre- 
sentatives when responding to the impertinent resolutions of the 
Maryland Legislature (great applause), to declare that they who 
attempt to excite these passions arc doing it for no patriotic pur- 
poses. They are doing it to facilitate a party triumph. They 
are doing it to blacken and render hateful their fellow-citizens in 
the eyes of their fellow-citizens. They are playing into the hands 
of that element of disunion which exists at the South, and which 
rejoices in having the chorus of " disunion if Lincoln is elected" 



FOURTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT OF MARYLAND. 157 

rung all over the South, bcoausc, if the contingency should occur, 
they can appeal to men's pride and their consistency to precipitate 
them into a revolution. 

Now I say that these representations arc misrepresentations of 
the condition of affairs at the North. What is the great point of 
diversity ? In Congress, after the election of speaker, there was 
scarcely a whisper about "John Brown." He had served his 
purpose and was dropped. There was scarcely a whisper about 
" disunion." Ifr would serve no purpose. On the other side, the 
talk among the men of the opposition, from the South as well as 
from the North, was of the corruptions of the government, of the 
necessity of a change, of the anxiety of getting somebody who 
could accomplish that change. Now the tone seems to be differ- 
ent. What arc the opinions which prevent their acting together? 
Not that a man's opinions are at all the criteria by which we arc 
to be guided in voting for him or refusing to vote for him. If 
that were the case we never could elect a President, because there 
is no one with whom we concur in every particular. We must 
guide ourselves according to the policy we know they are going to 
pursue, and allow their abstract opinions to remain abstract opin- 
ions, unless they are called into active practice, and are matters 
directly in issue. I say that, at this moment, according to the 
avowal of every party not Democratic — mark the limitation — ac- 
cording to the avowal of every party excepting the two wings of 
the Democratic party, the Slavery Question is absolutely 
settled if the Democracy will let it alone. In the language of 
Mr. Webster, " There is not afoot of territory within the jurisdic- 
tion of the United States, the condition of which, as slave or free, 
is not now irrevocably settled by some law ; and if that be the 
case, there arc some misrepresentations afloat which require to be 
corrected. 

First, gentlemen, what are the opinions of the opposing candi- 
dates — Mr. Breckinridge, Mr. Douglas, Mr. Lincoln — upon this 
great question ? Fortunately, the gentleman who prepared the 
Address of the Union Party, my personal and political friend, 
Mr. Boteler, of Virginia, than whom there is no sounder Whig, 
no more chivalrous gentleman, no more earnest friend of John 
Bell, no more pertinacious, undying enemy of the Democratic 
party existing (applause), has in one portion of that admirable 
address used these words : " The more conservative portion of 



158 SPEECH BEFORE THE ELECTORS OF THE 

the Republican party have tacitly acquiesced in the Fugitive Slave 
Law, in the existence of slavery in the District of Columbia, and 
in the right to carry slaves from one State to another." That in- 
dicates that tlu 1 whole of that wide field is covered and out of 
controversy. You arc safe, then, at home. You arc safe in carry- 
ing, if you choose to carry, your slaves to Mississippi, to sell them. 
You "are safe from the example of freedom in the District of Co- 
lumbia. There is nothing of that kind open at all. When he 
said they had "acquiesced in the Fugitive Slave Law," he did not 
.slate it strongly enough, because the statements are, from Mr. 
Corwin last winter in the House, and others, Mr. Lincoln himself 
included, that it must be executed, " not grudgingly, but fully and 
honestly." (Applause.) Docs any body take the trouble to re- 
peat these sentiments when talking about politics before the peo- 
ple oi' Maryland? Then my friend Mr. Botclcr proceeds in 
another sentence to say this: 

"At this moment no niic will question the correctness of the statement that there 

is not a foot of the territory of the United States, the condition of which in refer- 
ence to slavery is not already fixed by law, and there is no place within the federal 

domain upon which the abstract theories of the extremists oi' either section, in rc- 
gaid to the exclusion of slavery from the Territories or its introduction into them, 
can be practically applied." 

That is what I have been saving before you, people of the 
Fourth Congressional District, for five long years, and there is no 
question now open except such as the Democracy may sec lit to 
open, that the way to settle the Slavery Question is to be silent on 
it; and it is greatly to be regretted, it is with me a matter of pro- 
found regret, that my Friend Mr. Botclcr, in the residue of that 
document, should have allowed himself to go into a discussion as 
to the responsibilities for the opening of the question, and to lay 
it perhaps at certain doors where it was not altogether justly due. 
But, taking this starting-point, that it is a question of abstractions, 
that there is no Territory to which mere theories are required to 
be applied, does not that at once end the whole matter? Is it not 
of itself an absolute confession that there is no ground for the im- 
putation upon the people of the North in general, that there is no 
ground for fear in the event of Mr. Lincoln's succeeding in lieu of 
Mr. Bell, that there is no fear of a dissolution of the Union by rea- 
son oi' any thing these gentlemen may do if they happen to get 
possession of the government? Is not that distinctly the confes- 



FOURTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT OF MARYLAND. | 59 

siori of that statement, that in reference to the substantial ques- 
tions I Lave indicated there is an absolute concurrence, and in 
reference to the others in the Territories they arc questions of 
abstractions? I could not have my own opinion more felicitously, 
more accurately, or from a more authoritative source, stated for 
the information of my constituents and of the country. 

Now, what arc the individual opinions of the gentlemen who 
arc before the country for the votes of the people? First, for 
Mr. Breckin ridge. We all know that he is the seceding candi- 
date of the Democratic party. We all know that his friends se- 
ceded because of an inability to agree upon the Slavery Question. 
We find him and Mr. Douglas equally the victims of that element 
of distraction with which they first broke up the Whig party, 
then severed and broke up the American party, and to which they 
have themselves, by a righteous judgment, at last fallen victims. 
(Applause.) What are Mr. Breckinridge's opinions ? The most 
extreme, untenable, and dangerous of all; yet people, half of them, 
are afraid to controvert them. lie maintains that the Constitu- 
tion of itself carries slavery into all the Territories ; that under it 
any individual has a right to carry his slave there without any 
law ; and that laws must be passed by Congress, as they may be- 
come needful, for the purpose of protecting it. The result, there- 
fore, of the election of Mr. Breckinridge is, that there will be a 
perpetual struggle in the Congress of the United States, by per- 
sons who desire to carry negroes into the Territories, and do not 
wish to do so until they are protected by law, to secure the pas- 
sage of laws by Congress to protect them there. There is not the 
remotest probability that such a law can ever be passed through 
both houses of Congress. It is therefore, in its very statement, 
an clement of perpetual discord, of perpetual strife', of perpetual 
alienation, perpetually tending to widen still farther apart the two 
portions of the Union, until possibly, on some great day, a disso- 
lution may follow, in the heated state of the public mind under 
some casualty of the moment. 

What arc Mr. Douglas's opinions? They have been variously 
stated by himself in his wide circuit through the country ; yet I 
take it that, for this purpose, there can not be any great difficulty 
in describing them with accuracy. I desire to do him no injustice; 
I desire to do Mr. Breckinridge no injustice. I merely wish to 
inform my constituents what arc the things which politicians try 



160 SPEECH BEFORE THE ELECTORS OF THE 

to conceal. Mr. Douglas has shown, with great emphasis and 
great point latterly, in a speech, that the Constitution does not 
carry slavery into the Territories. Of course it would be beyond 
the control of the people of a Territory, exactly as any provision 
of the Constitution applicable to a State is beyond the control of 
the people of the State ; but Mr. Douglas's opinion is, that the in- 
habitants of a Territory have themselves the absolute right to 
introduce and allow slavery if they see fit, or to prohibit and ex- 
clude it if they see fit. "Whether they have this power by reason 
of some inherent right, or by reason of the acts of Congress organ- 
izing the Territories, his language is doubtful; sometimes he seems 
to say one thing, and sometimes the other. At any rate, he con- 
tends that they may pass what law they please in reference to slav- 
ery, and may make their domestic institutions to suit themselves. 
The great struggle in the Democratic party, and that on which 
it has gone to pieces in the great storm, is, which of these two 
opinions is the orthodox doctrine of the party. Now, while I am 
very unwilling to undertake to decide questions of party history 
or of party law for the Democrats, I rather fear that my friend, 
Mr. Douglas, has the better of his antagonist as a question of po- 
litical history. I rather fear that he is not merely the regular 
nominee of the Democratic party, but that he likewise is the rep- 
resentative of the regular Democratic opinion. I rather think that 
if there has been a change, the change has been/rom him, and not 
by him from his companions. I rather think that in his great 
speech in the Senate toward the end of the last session he arranged 
an amount of authority which ought to have satisfied, or at least 
tended strongly to satisfy my mind, and probably satisfied a good 
many others, that under the ambiguous phrase " non-interven- 
tion" was couched the very dogma that he himself proclaimed. 
And certainly it looked as if he rather had his enemies on the hip 
when he quoted the language of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, " it 
being the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate 
slavery into any Territory, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to 
leave the people thereof perfectly free to regulate their domestic 
institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of 
the United States." I take it that these words will scarcely bear 
any other interpretation than that the people of a Territory, before 
they become a State, have a right, according to the views of the 
gentlemen who drew and passed that act, to introduce or exclude 



FOURTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT OF MARYLAND. \Q\ 

slavery. I rather think that he had the "old public functionary" on 
the hip when he went farther, and quoted from his letter of 1856, 
in which he said that the people of a Territory, like the people of 
a State, had a right to regulate the question of slavery for them- 
selves. 

Whatever may be the truth between those two divisions of the 
Democratic party, I do not desire to cast any more confusion into 
their midst than is there now. (Laughter.) I do not know how 
they will ever be able to solve the great problem as to what 
are their opinions, unless they shall bring an action in the United 
States Court on a wager, and carry it to the Supreme Court, and 
have it there decided. (Laughter.) Or, if the spoils should ever 
be divided again, there should be a suit brought in equity to de- 
termine which of the two portions is the real sececler, and which 
is entitled to the whole of the property. (Laughter.) That is a 
problem that I do not mean to touch; it is a controversy in which 
I have no interest ; the farther and bitterer it is waged, the bet- 
ter probably for the country. But there is at least one good and 
patriotic thing that Judge Douglas has done in his life. Having 
lent himself to the extreme Southern portion of his party to do 
their work, when his turn came they would not lend themselves 
to him ; they thought they had been dealing with a tool, and the}* 
found they had been dealing with a master, and they determined 
to break him ; and he reciprocated the compliment by breaking 
up the Democratic party. (Applause.) 

There is another good thing that he has done. The doctrine 
of Mr. Breckinridge to which I have referred, it is claimed, rests 
upon the decision of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott 
case; although Mr. Bevendy Johnson, who argued that case, said 
that really the Supreme Court never passed upon any such ques- 
tion — and it is difficult for any one who knows any thing about 
the legal points really involved in the record before the court to 
surmise how it was possible for them even to have gotten at it — 
yet this theory, bolstered up by the perpetual assertions of politi- 
cal men, has been adopted by the great body of the Democratic 
party at the South, and some of our friends are gradually gliding 
into it, until I suppose it will come, after a while, to be a great 
piece of treason to the South, a great invasion of Southern rights, 
something dangerous to her internal condition, to venture to moot 
a question which is only ten years old, and to say that you do 

L 



1(52 SPEECH BEFORE THE ELECTORS OF THE 

not believe in any such legal absurdity as that the Constitution 
(which says nothing about slavery in the Territories) has extend- 
ed it to the Territories — an opinion as absurd as that Congress 
can not establish slavery in a Territory if it see fit. 

The Democratic party has lived upon its boasted orthodoxy for 
the last twenty years. It has been " out at the elbows" in every 
thing else ; its reputation is all gone for every thiug except im- 
pudence and audacity ; but, by holding itself out as the special 
protector of Southern institutions, it has been enabled to stand 
upon its legs. It has asserted its own exclusive orthodoxy, al- 
ways putting up the most extreme and untenable pretensions, 
and always smearing every body else over with the brush of abo- 
litionism who did not see fit to agree with it. Did any body 
happen to quote the resolutions of the Legislature of Ohio, or the 
nice family quarrel between the Ilards and Softs of New York, 
or any other of the wranglings and diversities in the free States, 
over this " hard doctrine and difficult to be received" by North- 
ern men, he was told, " You must not pretend to discuss differences 
in the Democratic party; it is one and indivisible." (Laughter.) 
But Judge Douglas has done this patriotic service ; he has carried 
from Maryland to Louisiana, through every slave State, the ele- 
ments of division upon that new dogma; and when it is attempted 
to assail others for expressing their opinions on the Slavery Ques- 
tion, who avow that they hold, as I avow that I hold, all the 
opinions of Henry Clay (applause) — a little out of fashion in 
divers particulars in this day, but I am getting to be old-fashioned 
— they can not turn and say, " You are an Abolitionist, and the 
united Democratic party is the only one that is faithful to the 
South ;" because, in every neighborhood, in every town, in every 
parish, in every county, rise up the friends of Stephen A. Doug- 
las, and say, " The Constitution does not carry slavery into the 
Territories, but the people have a right to exclude it if they 
choose." (Applause.) It is no longer treason to say that, for 
their own men say it ; and now, in the Commonwealth of Vir- 
ginia, the Breckinridge men are on their knees to the Douglas 
men, and say, " Oh, don't divide, and give the state to Bell." 
(Laughter.) The governor of the State, holding all the powers 
of the State, the man who must call out the Virginia militia " to 
arrest the march of the United States troops in case of a rebel- 
lion farther South," is tainted with the heresy of Douglasism. 



FOURTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT OF MARYLAND. ^33 

(Laughter.) They have ceased to be powerful; they have 
ceased to be dangerous; there is again freedom of opinion; "men 
can speak above their breath ; men can read history, and repeat 
it, without the fear of being tarred and feathered, in any neigh- 
borhood in the South. (Applause.) If Mr. Douglas shall never 
do any thing more than that, if he shall fail to be elevated at any 
future period to that glittering height which is the object of his 
ambition, I desire to say that future generations will owe him a 
debt of gratitude for having, in the course of the internecine 
struggles of the Democratic party, and perhaps without meaning- 
it, but from the necessities of the case, been instrumental in re- 
storing free speech, free opinion, and a right to think as the 
fathers thought upon the Constitution of the United States, 
though he does not happen to think with them. (Applause.) 

Now, what are Mr. Bell's opinions on these subjects? He 
avows, like an honest man, his opinions, and they substantially 
concur as a matter of abstract opinion with those of Mr. Breckin- 
ridge. That is, he thinks that, without a law of Congress, under 
the Constitution there is a right to take slaves into the Territories ; 
but he differs from Mr. Breckinridge in this: that he has been 
nominated by a party calling itself the Constitutional Union 
party, and that party proclaims itself, in its address from which 
I have read to you, an enemy of slavery agitation, in favor of 
things remaining as they are, opposed to any farther legislation, 
for the doctrine that I have so often inculcated in your hearing, 
of silence upon the Negro Question. Let it die the death; let 
the Territories remain as they are; let there be no effort to 
change their condition, and there can be no controversy. That 
is a position which a gentleman holding any abstract opinion 
whatever may very well come up to, and that is the opinion 
which the brief and pointed platform of the Constitutional Union 
party assigns to both its candidates, wholly independent of what 
their individual opinions may be. They are what Mr. Boteler in 
his address most appropriately terms mere abstractions, abstract 
opinions that are not required to be acted on at this time, and can 
only be called into living existence by an attempt to put them in 
practice, and change the existing condition of the Territories ; 
and if I understand the opinion of all the gentlemen who, with 
myself, advocate the election of Mr. Bell, it is, that he may silence 
that controversy, and not reopen it; leave things as they are, and 



164 SPEECH BEFORE THE ELECTORS OF THE 

not attempt to vary tliem. If that be not the view with which 
he was nominated, if that be not the purpose of his friends, then 
i t will be the most pitiable farce, and I should be the last man in 
the world to ask any one here to vote for John Bell as a person 
who was going to quiet the Slavery Question. It can not be 
quieted as long as there is an effort to change any thing, for that 
raises the question. When any body proposes that any thing in 
the Territories, no matter what it may be, no matter for whom it 
may operate, or against whom it may operate, should be otherwise 
than it is, that instant he opens the controversy ; and when the 
controversy is opened, no one knows where or how it will be 
ended. 

Next, with reference to Mr. Everett. He holds, or did hold in 
former days, opinions upon exactly the other extreme. You re- 
member that Mr. Fillmore was impeached of abolitionism because, 
at a former time, when a candidate for Congress, he had declared 
himself in favor of the abolition of slavery in the District of Colum- 
bia ; and yet, in spite of that, because men knew what his policy 
would be, the people elected him Vice-President ; and all the people 
rose up to do him honor when he passed out from the discharge of 
the duties of his high office. That is only another illustration of 
how false a guide mere abstract constitutional opinions are when 
you are selecting a President. The question is, never what he 
may think as a question of law, but what he will do as an admin- 
istrator of the law. (Applause.). There can not be a more strik- 
ing example of that than in the case of Mr. Everett, one of the 
most distinguished, patriotic, conservative, and moderate men in 
the United States, perfectly orthodox in his old Whig policy and 
principles, having filled some of the high stations of the nation, 
and now not, perhaps, without a prospect of filling the highest 
itself. That gentleman was sent many years ago, I think by 
General Harrison, as minister to England. It appeared, as well 
as I remember the circumstances, that he had previously been 
a candidate for some office in Massachusetts, and there he had 
questions thrust at him to which, in the heat of the canvass, he 
responded, and it seemed that he avowed himself in favor of 
abolishing the slave-trade between the States, of the immediate 
abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and against the 
admission of any more slave States. Nowadays people would 
open their eyes with horror at the mere mention of opinions like 



FOURTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT OF MARYLAND. 165 

these ; and in that day they wanted to injure that great and dis- 
tinguished man because he entertained these opinions, and the 
action of the Georgia Legislature was invoked because Mr. Berrien 
had voted for his confirmation. Now, Edward Everett is the 
candidate of the Constitutional Union party for the purpose of 
stopping agitation on the Slavery Question (applause), and in my 
judgment they could have got no fitter candidate in the United 
States. (Great applause.) 

I say that a man's abstract opinions have little or nothing to 
do with his discharge of the high functions of either President or 
Vice-President ; and when they are invoked by political partisans, 
they are invoked to distract the timid, to divide their opponents, 
to draw off votes, to enable themselves to elect some person of 
less position, without expressed opinions, by the prejudices that 
they excite, by quotations of antiquated opinions, or opinions in- 
tended for another era, applicable to a different combination of 
circumstances, having no relation to those things that are now to 
be done, and therefore impertinences, so far as the political can- 
vass is concerned. Are we to be prevented from voting for Mr. 
Everett because some Democratic orator down in the slaveholding 
counties may rake up that question and the response, and say, 
"You are voting for an Abolitionist?" I have seen the day 
when men who were Whigs were fools enough to be frightened 
at that howl. I take it that now they have learned that it is 
merely a howl, and nothing else, and they treat it accordingly. 
(Applause.) 

Both Mr. Everett and Mr. Bell, by virtue of the simple decla- 
ration that they are in favor of the Constitution, the Union, and 
the enforcement of the laws, have pledged themselves to silence, 
to quiet, to leaving things as they are, to the faithful and honest 
execution of every law, and from such men in these days that is 
ample. It is impossible to go back into the history of any man 
who has filled public station in this country for twenty years, and 
not find that in the sharp struggles of parties here he has uttered 
an obnoxious sentiment, that there he has been guilty of an im- 
prudent or unpopular vote, that here he has answered a question 
thrust at him in the heat of a canvass, which, pushed to its logical 
consequences, would involve a great error. If you allow your- 
selves to be misled by that style of canvassing, you will strip the 
country of the services of nine out of every ten of its best men, 



166 SPEECH BEFORE THE ELECTORS OF THE 

confine it to people who have been so insignificant that they have 
never been called upon to make a declaration upon any great 
controverted question; who have all the time been skulking 
along, endeavoring to get upon the popular side for the time be- 
ing, eschewing pen, ink, paper, and printing, as if they were the 
inventions of Mephistopheles, and trusting by their very insignif- 
icance to worm themselves up into high station, as I have seen 
divers in these latter days, even to the presidential chair. It is 
this sheer cowardice, this fear to take gentlemen upon their course 
and conduct, and not upon their expressions and their abstract 
opinions, that has driven great men from the presidential chair. 
It is because gentlemen are afraid of being turned out of Congress, 
are afraid of going before their constituents, and being hissed for 
making the avowal of obnoxious opinions, that you have weak 
men in public life, and the race of great men has gone to the 
grave. (Applause.) 

Well, now, what are the opinions of Mr. Lincoln? Let us 
meet the question right in the eye : What are the opinions of Mr. 
Lincoln, because there are certain parties in this country who 
say that if he is elected they will dissolve the Union. I do not 
assert that all Mr. Breckinridge's friends say so. I believe that 
the vast majority of them have no such idea. I believe that 
very many of them who say so would not attempt it when the 
time came. (Laughter.) I believe in the " sober second thought," 
I believe that the difficulties of the practical execution, that hor- 
ror at shedding fraternal blood, would make the boldest pause. 
I do not fear the result. I am confident that Mr. Breckinridge 
himself entertains no such policy. I am not here to misrepresent 
any political antagonist. I am not here to sow dissensions be- 
tween any regions of the country. I merely say that there are 
parties who declare that that event will be cause for a dissolution 
of the Union ; and that declaration on their part is made the 
pretext of an echo from other quarters, that if Lincoln be elected, 
such will be the result. Now I say that will not be the result, 
and in my judgment it will not be tried ; but since it is said that 
in that event they are going to take steps at least to break up the 
confederacy, let us see upon what ground they are going to do it. 

Mr. Boteler says, in his address, in the most authoritative man- 
ner, that on the really great questions, among the conservative 
portions of the Eepublican party, there is an acquiescence in what 



FOURTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT OF MARYLAND. 167 

we suppose to be essential to our safety — the right of slave-trade 
between the States, the right to continue slavery in the District of 
Columbia, and the execution of the Fugitive Slave Law. What 
else is open ? Nothing, literally nothing, excepting the mere con- 
dition of the Territories. Then, what now is the condition of the 
Territories ? Absolutely free in point of fact ; no slave in them, 
remaining as they were at the time of the repeal of the Missouri 
Compromise — in spite of that repeal, remaining as free from slav- 
ery as if that compromise had never been repealed. What is there, 
then, to change ? From the extremest point of view, nothing. 
It is only with reference to the question of slavery in the Terri- 
tories that we are told, by the address from the National Com- 
mittee of the Union party, that there is a controversy open, and 
as to them it is said that the controversy is a controversy of ab- 
stractions. But it can be stated stronger than that. So far as 
the opinions of Mr. Lincoln and his friends go, the Territories are 
in the exact condition in which they want to keep them. They 
say, "Let the subject alone, and they have nothing to say ; if you 
attempt to carry slavery there, we will attempt to exclude it ; if 
you attempt to extend it, we will oppose the extension ; if you 
attempt to plant slavery in territory which we think is now free, 
we not only will not vote with you, but we will vote against you, 
and we will use the power of the government for the purpose of 
keeping it where it is." It is not necessary, even if it was their 
design, now to propose the passage of any law on the subject of 
slavery at all. The Territories are practically in the exact con- 
dition that they were when Mr. Clay introduced his great Com- 
promise Bill, which was the foundation of peace until the contro- 
versy was reopened by the Democrats in 1854. The condition of 
the Territories remains as it was when Mr. Clay had his bills 
passed, saying not one word on the subject of slavery, but resting 
on his resolutions. What were his resolutions? The second of 
the resolutions which Mr. Clay brought into the Senate on the 
great occasion in 1850 runs in this wise — I pray you, gentlemen, 
be not shocked because I told you that Mr. Clay held some old- 
fashioned notions, but this resolution was the foundation of the 
legislation of that day ; it was attacked by the extreme Southern 
men in the Senate, it was denounced as being no compromise at 
all ; but it was the view on which great men, such as Mr. Benton 
on one side, and Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster on the other side, con- 



168 SPEECH BEFORE THE ELECTORS OF THE 

curred for the settlement of the Territorial difficulties, and there- 
fore it bears a historic significance even beyond the vast authority 
of the name of the man who reported it. It runs in this wise : 

" That as slavery does not exist by law, and is not likely to be introduced into 
anv territory acquired by the United States from the Republic of Mexico, it is in- 
expedient for Congress to provide by law either for its introduction or exclusion 
from»any part of said territory." 

Silence upon the Slavery Question, leaving the Territory as it 
was, and nothing more, was the great wisdom of that compromise. 
(Applause.) Here you see what Mr. Clay thought. He thought 
slavery did not exist there, because the laws of Mexico excluded 
it. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 excluded it from all the 
residue of the territory. It was on that basis, coupled with the 
unfitness of the country for slave labor even if the laws did not 
exclude it, that Mr. Webster made the great declaration that there 
was an irrepealable law, of one kind or another, which forever 
settled the condition as to slavery of every foot of territory in the 
United States. 

Now, gentlemen, what Abraham Lincoln thinks is what Mr. 
Clay thought with reference to slavery and the condition of the 
Territory — that it is free. It is therefore needless to pass any 
law upon the subject. He thinks it is time, and so do a great 
many others who bear Mr. Clay's memory in high esteem — not 
with Mr. Douglas, that a bunch of squatters, congregated under a 
bush, can pass a law to determine the condition of the Territory 
for you and me — but that the great National Legislature, which 
under the Constitution has the power " to make all needful rules 
and regulations concerning the Territory," has the power, if it see 
fit, to exclude or to admit slavery in any Territory, and that, in 
the absence of a statute, there is no law to authorize it ; and then 
slavery can no more exist than a man can exist without air to 
breathe. Here is the language of Mr. Clay upon that subject — 
that it is an evil, and ought not to be extended voluntarily : 

"I am extremely sorry to hear the senator from Mississippi say that he requires 
first the extension of the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific, and also that he 
is not satisfied with that, but requires, if I understood him correctly, a positive pro- 
vision for the admission of slavery south of that line. And now, sir, coming from 
a slave State as I do, I owe it to myself, I owe it to truth, I owe it to the subject to 
state, that no earthly power could induce me to vote for a specific measure for the 
introduction of slavery where it had not before existed, either south or north of that 
line. Coming as I do from a slave State, it is my solemn, deliberate, and well-ma- 



FOURTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT OF MARYLAND. 169 

turcd determination that no power — no earthly power — shall compel me to vote for 
the positive introduction of slavery either south or north of that line. Sir, while 
you reproach, and justly too, our British ancestors for the introduction of this insti- 
tution upon the continent of America, I am, for one, unwilling that the posterity of 
the present inhabitants of California and New Mexico shall reproach us for doing 
just what we reproach Great Britain for doing to us. If the citizens of those Ter- 
ritories choose to establish slavery, I am for admitting them with such provisions in 
their Constitution ; but then it will be their own work, and not ours, and their pos- 
terity will have to reproach them, and not us, for forming Constitutions allowing 
the institution, of slavery to exist among them. These are my views, sir, and I 
choose to express them ; and I care not how extensively and universally they are 
known. The honorable senator from Virginia has expressed his opinion that slavery 
exists in these Territories, and I have no doubt that opinion is sincerely and hon- 
estly entertained by him ; and I would say with equal sincerity and honesty, that I 
believe that slavery nowhere exists within any portion of the territory acquired by «.? 
from Mexico. He holds a directly contrary opinion to mine, as he has a perfect 
right to do ; and we will not quarrel about that difference of opinion." 

Then, again, touching the power: 

"The power, then, Mr. President — and I extend it to the introduction as well as 
to the prohibition of slavery in the new Territories — does exist with Congress. I 
think iuis a power adequate either to introduce or exclude slavery. I admit the 
argument in both its forms of application." 

Judged by the standard of Henry Clay, the opinion of Mr. 
Lincoln, together with the opinion -of all the great men of the 
North, excepting, possibly, a few Democrats, for aught I know to 
the contrary, is, that slavery is an evil which they are unwilling 
to extend, and that the power of exclusion exists, leaving open 
the question of the necessity or expediency of exercising it. Now, 
what with reference to the expediency of exercising it ? The 
opinion is expressed, as distinctly as can be, that since slavery 
does not, in point of fact, exist in the Territories, and since they 
think it can only exist by affirmative legislation, they have no 
legislation to ask unless legislation is asked on the other side ; and 
hence that great declaration of Mr. Sherman, when he was candi- 
date for Speaker in the House of Representatives, in the face of 
the storm of vilification and abuse with which he was assailed by 
the Democrats during the whole of that long controversy — a de- 
claration which gentlemen may not be willing to repeat, but which 
it behooves every man who wishes to know the truth of the his- 
tory of the country to bear in his mind and ponder — in substance, 
if not in words, was, " I tell gentlemen now here that there is not 
one subject of sectional controversy which can possibly arise un- 



170 SPEECH BEFORE THE ELECTORS OF THE 

less it is thrust on us by our opponents." That was said when 
he was the candidate of the Kepublican party for Speaker of the 
Ilouse of Representatives. It was said in the face of the Repub- 
licans who were voting for him. It was a sentiment that I knew 
he had entertained ever since I had the honor of sitting in the 
Ilouse with him. It might have been thought of some persons a 
rash declaration for a man in the doubtful and ticklish condition 
of a candidate for Speaker, within three or four votes of an elec- 
tion, and therefore the more manly, and also the more significant. 
It was received in silence by his party, and he received again and 
again their votes for that position. 

Does that look like reopening the Slavery Question ? Every 
body who knows any thing about the history of the country must 
know that, from the first day of the repeal of the Missouri Com- 
promise down to this time, whatever of excitement there has been 
in the country, and especially in the North, however much of ex- 
aggerated sentiment there may have been uttered, however furi- 
ous the onslaughts of their newspapers and speakers on the South 
and its institutions — never more violent, never more excited, 
never more outrageous than the retorts and retaliations of South- 
ern Democrats upon them — judging by the record (the only way 
to judge of the purposes of political parties), there never has been 
an act attempted that looked beyond reinstating things as they 
were prior to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. There 
were measures which I thought were unwise; there were some 
which I thought were imprudent ; they were all, I thought, un- 
necessary, because I knew they never could become laws, even if 
ill results would not have followed from them if they had become 
laws ; because the fixed Democratic majority in the Senate pre- 
vented their enactment ; but the scope of these proposed laws was 
confined to the reinstatement of things as they were before the 
repeal of the Missouri Compromise. The controversy has raged 
about the Territory of Kansas. The struggle has been on the 
part of the administration, in Democratic hands, to force slavery 
into it, against the will of the people. The struggle on the part 
of the whole body of the Northern people has been to prevent 
slavery from being forced into Kansas. Nobody can doubt that 
that is an extension of slavery. Nobody can doubt that that is 
carrying slavery where it has not heretofore existed. Nobody 
can doubt, therefore, that it is within the position that leading 



FOURTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT OF MARYLAND. 171 

Northern gentlemen, Mr. Lincoln among them, take with reference 
to slavery, and especially the opinion of that great man, Mr. Ed- 
ward Bates, that they are opposed to its extension, to its going 
where it is not now, and that is all. 

I happen to have been a party to all this controversy, some- 
times voting in a manner that did not satisfy some of my friends, 
and sometimes, perhaps, voting in a manner that did not altogeth- 
er satisfy me on cooler reflection subsequently ; at all times, how- 
ever, struggling to do what I thought was best under the circum- 
stances, and with the little power that I had. But I was at least 
a witness of them ; I saw what passed ; I heard the argument ; I 
think I remember the history. Turn to the journals of Congress, 
and you will find, I think, that that controversy sums itself up in 
these several points: 

The first bill was a bill to repeal the laws of Kansas passed by 
the Legislature whose legality was contested. You remember 
that it was supposed — nay, asserted and proved ; there is no sup- 
position about it now; every body admits it and every body knows 
it, since the great investigation ordered by the first Congress in 
which I was by your votes — that that Legislature was elected by 
Missourians and others out of the Territory of Kansas. A bill 
was introduced to repeal the laws of that Legislature forced on the 
people by non-residents of the Territory. Was that agitating the 
Slavery Question ? The next was a bill introduced by my friend, 
Mr. Dunn, now deceased, reorganizing the Territory of Kansas, 
reinstating the Missouri Compromise, and providing that any 
slaves which might be there might be removed within one or two 
years after the passage of the bill, which bill was met by the 
Democrats in the North with an attack upon the Eepublicans for 
establishing slavery in the Territory, and more than one member 
of Congress lost his election by reason of that Democratic argu- 
ment. That, you see, merely went to reinstating the Missouri 
Compromise line. The third was the bill to admit Kansas under 
the Topeka Constitution. That failed ; but it was only to make 
it a free State. It was an unwise bill — a bill that ought not to 
have become a law, because there was a mere handful of people 
in the Territory ; but it did nothing so bad as what the Democrats 
tried to do the next year, when they framed the Lecompton Con- 
stitution by a minority of the people, and attempted to force that 
on the people of Kansas. The next bill was to abolish tho exist- 



172 SPEECH BEFORE THE ELECTORS OF THE 

ing laws, and to reorganize the Territory of Kansas without one 
word relating to slavery in any way. In other words, as the con- 
test progressed, the hot blood cooled, and the whole body of the 
Northern representatives began to see that all they wanted was 
to wipe out the Territorial laws, leaving the Territorj^ to the peo- 
ple, and they stopped there in that bill. 

The only other controversy that arose was in reference to the 
Lecompton Constitution. The Democratic party had again taken 
the lead in forcing a slave Constitution upon the people against 
their will, and I, together with other Southern representatives, Mr. 
Marshall (now supporting Mr. Breckinridge), Mr. Gilmer, of North 
Carolina, Mr. Underwood, of Kentucky, Mr. Harris, of Maryland 
(applause), and one or two others, concurred in defeating it, under 
the lead of Mr. Crittenden. I take it that it was not agitating the 
Slavery Question. If it was, it was agitating it in very strange 
company and under very singular auspices. 

Now, gentlemen, the statement I have just made covers the his- 
tory of the controversy in Congress, since I went there, up to the 
beginning of the last session, on the subject of the Territories. 
The wild platform adopted at Philadelphia in 1856 said, "It is 
both the right and duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories 
those twin relics of barbarism, potygamy and slavery." At Chi- 
cago (to show what men do when they become cool) all that reso- 
lution is wholly left out, and there is in it no declaration of a duty 
to pass any law at this time on the subject. They declare the 
condition of the Territories to be free in their opinion, in the ab- 
sence of any law on the subject, just as Mr. Breckinridge declares 
them to be slave in the absence of a law on the subject. But they 
proposed no action on the subject, and they repealed and omitted 
that resolution which was in the platform of 1856. If any thing 
more significant could be required, it is that in the three, or four, 
or five bills which were introduced during the last session by 
Mr. Grow, of Pennsylvania — in all conscience, a stiff Free-Soiler 
enough for any body — as chairman of the Committee on Territo- 
ries, to organize certain new Territories, there was simply a dec- 
laration, in the precise spirit of the resolution which I have read 
as reported by Mr. Clay, that nothing in these bills, which were 
absolutely silent on the subject, should be taken to authorize slav- 
ery in the Territories — a simple declaration of opinion, needless, 
in my judgment imprudent, because liable to be distorted and mis- 



FOURTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT OF MARYLAND. 173 

represented, but not at all amounting to a law of affirmative ex- 
clusion, but leaving the law as it stood at the time of the passage 
of the bills. 

Well, gentlemen, how are you to judge of the purposes of a 
party ? By hunting up the speeches of small men who want to 
carry a neighborhood vote ? By extracts from furious editors of 
small papers, who think they are never safe unless they are beyond 
the most extreme in their neighborhood? Are we to jud«-e of 
men's opinions by the imputations of their enemies and their ex- 
aggerations for a purpose? Are we to suppose that our friends 
are black because their enemies daub them black? Or are we 
not rather to look at the facts, and to remember that among the 
millions of the North there are men as wise as we are, as honest 
as we are, as well educated as we are, having as great interests at 
stake in the perpetuity of the Union as we have, and as earnestly 
and honestly devoted to the integrity of the Constitution as we 
are, and that they are not likely deliberately to invite civil war, 
deliberately to moot questions which are wholly needless, what- 
ever their opinions may be on them ? Let us at least give them 
credit for common sense, and take their declarations rather than 
the declarations of their enemies and of our enemies. Is a Demo- 
crat's impeachment evidence against any body on a question of 
politics? (Laughter, and cries of "No, no.") Now wo all know 
that there are men who are furious at the South on the Ne°ro 
Question, and there are men at the North who are furious on the 
Negro Question. I am thankful that they are in an equally small 
minority in both sections. Their power is clamor. I do not be- 
lieve that between them they could set a regiment in the field, 
even if they desired to do so. 

And, gentlemen, if a collateral proof was required of how far 
the conservative masses of the North, the conservative leaders of 
the Republican party, or, rather, of the whole body of the opposi- 
tion in the North to the Democratic party, are misrepresented, 
there would be no better or more convincing proof than in the 
fact that while the whole body of the Republican party are de- 
nounced as Abolitionists, the Abolitionists themselves have very 
quietly refused their support, and are organizing separate tickets 
for themselves. (Laughter and applause.) Can Mr. Breckinridge's 
friends say as much of the disunionists ? Why are not the Abo- 
litionists satisfied with the representations of our Southern breth- 



17-i SPEECH BEFORE THE ELECTORS OF THE 

ren? They can not want any thing more than to invade the 
South ; they can not want any thing more than to disturb our fire- 
sides; they can not want any thing more than to break up the 
slave-trade between the States ; they can not want any thing more 
than scenes of blood and destruction throughout the country; 
they can not want any thing more than to repeat John Brown's 
crazy and bloody exploit by the thousand times a year. That is 
what we are taught by leading orators of the Democrats to expect, 
if not the result of a set purpose, the tendency of the conduct of 
the conservative millions of the North ; and that in the face of 
the fact that, great as was the storm raised by that insanity of 
John Brown, and reckless as were the imputations upon gentle- 
men of certain political opinions throughout the whole North, yet, 
with all the powers of the United States to rake evidence from 
one end of the country to the other, with a diligent examination, 
extending through months, by the Senate of the United States, 
by an able and honorable committee, headed by Mr. Mason, of 
Virginia, and after a careful examination by the Legislature of 
Virginia, there was no evidence found that implicated any body 
of confederates, or any man holding political position, or aspiring 
to hold any position, any where in the North, with that insane 
performance. It is, as I have said before, instead of being a source 
of disquietude, the most quieting of all the occurrences of the last 
half century. It has lifted the veil of misrepresentation, and en- 
abled us to see what men arc doing. Till that event occurred, 
and till these investigations were had, such was the uniformity of 
the imputation of extreme anti-slavery opinions to a great body 
of men at the North, and of an earnest determination to intermed- 
dle with Southern institutions to their damage, that gentlemen, 
even of calm minds, were perhaps justified in having a doubt, or 
even perhaps in forming opinions adverse to them upon the sub- 
ject. But when investigations were made, after that occurrence, 
subsequent to all the provocations, all the series of outrages in 
Kansas Territory, where Northern men were allowed to be hunt- 
ed down by the hundred, during, I believe, more than a year, for 
the express purpose of extending slavery into it, by border ruffians 
— notwithstanding all that excitement, nobody could be found im- 
plicated, except those at Harper's Ferry, directly with Brown, and 
one or two accomplices, who had fled. No man of name, not even 
•any of the leading Abolitionists at the North, w r as found concern- 



FOURTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT OF MARYLAND. 175 

ed in it. Why, it is, as a general thing, true, that the Abolition- 
ists of the North, so far from exciting rebellion, are of the Quakers' 
opinion, that it is wrong to shed blood, and are the most peaceable 
and quiet, if the silliest and most misled, of people in the world. 
(Laughter.) 

Gentlemen, I have stated what I believe to be the condition of 
affairs at the North. If, with these views of Mr. Lincoln and his 
leading friends, they should succeed in reaching power, my opin- 
ion is that they will act upon these opinions; and unless the ques- 
tion is forced on them by being raised by Democratic agitation, 
they will let it rest where it is, because they have nothing to ac- 
complish, and there is no reason why they should reopen the ques- 
tion, and they declare that their only purpose is to oppose the ex- 
tension of slavery into territory now free ; or, in the words of 
Mr. Bates — who is entitled to speak for them — in enumerating 
the opinions of Mr. Lincoln, his personal and political friend, "his 
opinions are, that slavery is an institution in the States, of the 
States which choose to have it, and it exists within these States 
beyond the control of Congress ; that Congress has supreme leg- 
islative power over all the Territories, and may at its discretion 
allow or forbid the existence of slavery within them ; that Con- 
gress in wisdom and sound policy ought not so to exercise its 
power, directly or indirectly, as to plant and establish slavery in 
any territory theretofore free, and that it is unwise and impolitic 
in the government of the United States to acquire tropical re- 
gions for the mere purpose of converting them into slave States." 

Then, gentlemen, over all the present Territories of the United 
States, unless Democrats agitate to extend slavery in fact, it is set- 
tled, according to the confessions of the Union party, according to 
the confession of every body excepting Mr. Douglas upon one side 
and Mr. Breckinridge upon the other. Who is in favor of ac- 
quiring more territory to reopen the question? I am not. Are 
you? ("No, no.") Is John Bell? Is Edward Everett ? Is Mr. 
Lincoln? Not one of .them. Which is the party that does not 
frown on the filibusters ; or, if not quite that, what party claims 
to be the party of expansion ; what party proposed to buy Cuba 
at an expense of $300,000,000— a small item of $18,000,000 in- 
terest per annum to be saddled on you and me ? Who proposed 
to take military possession of Sonora and Chihuahua, which, if 
once gotten, would never be given up ? Who was negotiating a 



176 SPEECH BEFORE THE ELECTORS OP THE 

treaty which virtually inaugurated a protectorate over Mexico, 
which must sooner or later resolve itself into a conquest and an- 
nexation ? Not those opposed to the Democratic party. 

The Democratic leaders are the persons who alone propose to 
acquire additional territory. If they do acquire it, they must take 
the responsibility of the agitation that will arise out of it. That 
it will be fierce is certain ; that it can be settled is uncertain. That 
the acquisition can be prevented, and ought to be prevented, is of 
all things the most clear. If great international necessities should 
force upon us, contrary to our will, additional territory, I take it 
that, irrespective of the abstract opinions of this party or that, it 
will be apt to settle itself according to the existing condition of 
the territory when it is acquired. I doubt very much, if you were 
to acquire the Tierra Caliente of Mexico to-morrow, with the Mexi- 
can population densely filling it, slavery could ever be carried 
there ; for it could only be carried there by consent of the people, 
if at all ; and the Mexicans, having abolished it once, would not 
be likely to reinstate it. On the other hand, if you acquired Cuba 
with its immense negro population, no amount of opposition could 
prevent its admission into the Union with its slaves, as it stood. 
When acquired, in other words, the law of settlement would be 
the statesman's law applied by Mr. Clay to the territory acquired 
from Mexico — the status quo, the condition in which it is when 
acquired. If it is free, it is impossible in this country ever to 
make it slave, for the whole body of the Northern vote is irrevo- 
cably committed against it. If it is slave, the body of the North- 
ern as well as of the Southern vote is committed against an aboli- 
tion of slavery in a State ; and Cuba must be acquired as a State, 
if acquired at all. The whole conservative body of the country 
would be resolutely and positively opposed to freeing the mass of 
negroes in that island, against the will of the people of the island, 
just exactly as they would be to freeing them in Louisiana itself. 
So I take it that if, in future years, we should be driven upon the 
acquisition of farther territory, the question will be settled as it 
was settled in 1850, and that no power in this country can prevent 
its being so settled, if, indeed, it be adjusted at all. If you acquire 
territory free, it will remain free. If you acquire the island of 
Cuba, slavery will remain the law of the land until the inhabitants 
change it. 

Gentlemen, we have in the threats against the Union, in the 



FOURTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT OF MARYLAND. 177 

event of the election of one of the candidates, only another in- 
stance of that persistent agitation of the Slavery Question, and 
appealing to men's fears, and attempting to shake their nerves, 
which has been the policy, in my judgment, of the Democratic- 
party for a great many years past. Break up the government ! 
Why, gentlemen, who are going to do it? Mr. Douglas is not, 
for his whole charge against his Democratic opponent is that he 
is a Disunionist. Mr. Bell is not, because he is named as the 
Union candidate. Mr. Lincoln is not, because one of the grounds 
of charge against him is that he says the South shall not secede 
if she wants to do so. (Laughter and applause.) Mr. Breckin- 
ridge disavows being a secessionist, and I believe him. The great 
body of his followers, I believe, disavow it likewise. I believe 
them. As to the remaining small body of noisy Disunionists — I 
have no doubt there are such persons in the United States, but I 
think that now, as heretofore, in the event of no great grievance 
occurring, of no great outrage being perpetrated, of no war being 
made on the Southern States and their institutions ; upon every 
thing being allowed to continue as it has been hitherto, and to go 
on as it has proceeded heretofore ; the sun being allowed to rise 
not covered with blood, and the moon being allowed to rise not 
turned to darkness — if these things shall continue, my impression 
is, that the hottest of the Disunionists will count their numbers, 
and they will count the numbers on the other side, and they will 
prudently, upon a reconsideration of the whole matter, wait for a 
more convenient season. (Great laughter and applause.) 

Then, gentlemen, is there any thing to be afraid of? Are we 
surrounded with terrific forms and shapeSj that haunt us as we 
pass along the streets, and make the merchant tremble for his ship 
upon the ocean, and the person holding stocks fear lest the stock 
board should show a decline in his favorite securities ? Or are 
persons who want to speculate in property calculating the dura- 
tion of the Union, to see whether land be worth a year's value in 
fee, or whether there will be so many people engaged in war that 
possibly rents will not be so high as they expected ? Are these 
the considerations that we are now called upon to weigh ? Are 
we on the borders of a civil war, or are we merely determining a 
question of political parties? If we are in the former, then, gen- 
tlemen, it requires very different methods from any that have been 
taken heretofore. It is not a New York or New Jersey contract 

M 



178 SPEECH BEFORE THE ELECTORS OF THE 

for fusion that will avert that danger. Is there so near a prospect 
that the Union will be broken up in the event of the triumph of 
Mr. Lincoln ? Then why do you not all turn in and vote for Mr. 
Breckinridge, who has the Disunionists in his ranks ? — for they 
will be quiet if he be elected. "Why does not Mr. Douglas cease 
his clamor about disunion, and get his friends to unite throughout 
the. South, and likewise in the North, with his political opponents? 
Or, gentlemen, if we are not to be so generous as that, and can 
biggie over a matter of men when the existence of the govern- 
ment is at stake, as the Democrats say they are the only party 
competent to preserve the Union, and they are now in an unfortu- 
nate and distracted minority, why do they not hold out the olive- 
branch to us and say " Know-Nothings as you are — enemies of 
civil and religious liberty, stained with midnight assassination — 
still, to save the government, we will even vote for you?" (Great 
applause.) 

That would be a coalition equal to the occasion, as the alarmist 
and agitators state it. There would be a necessity which would 
justify it. That would be the subordination of every political 
division to the existence of the government. But this puling 
question, "Shall I join with you," "Why, then, don't you join 
with me?" this miserable question as to who shall have the honor 
of saving the government and who shall make the sacrifice, is un- 
worthy of the crisis that Disunionists and Union savers assert to 
be at hand, and which the latter profess to desire to avert. In my 
judgment the Union receives more discredit from being saved all 
the time than it would from being let alone to save itself. (Ap- 
plause.) Thank Heaven, it is not a Maryland idea ; we do not 
deal with politics in that way in Maryland ; we do not make bar- 
gains with our political opponents, and lie down in the same bed, 
after they have spit at us, over us, for years. (Applause.) It is 
a New York idea, originating in local hostilities and interests — 
which has migrated into New Jersey, and tends to spread. It 
originated since the Baltimore Convention, since the nomination 
of Mr. Bell. " Oh ! let us make a fusion to beat Mr. Lincoln — 
not to elect Mr. Bell" — observe the phrase — "to beat Mr. Lin- 
coln," because all these evils will follow on his election ! What 
good is that going to do Mr. Bell? ("That's it") If there are 
these dangers, the men who cry out against them ought to be 
consistent in their proposals for fusion ; it should be carried into 



FOURTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT OF MARYLAND. 179 

every Northern State ; Mr. Breckinridge, Mr. Douglas, and Mr. 
Bell ought to unite there. Every gentleman in the South ought 
to be willing to abandon his political diversities of opinion with 
his neighbor, and sacrifice them on the altar of his country, if the 
country demand the sacrifice ; for when the struggle is for life or 
death, for peace or civil war, it is out of place to allow political 
divisions of opinion to keep asunder lovers of the country. All 
parties should be merged in the presence of the overruling neces- 
sity of the country. And when gentlemen make an argument 
which should lead them to subordinate their individual opinions, 
and lay them down in that way in order to induce others to make 
political sacrifices, and yet show no desire themselves to make 
them, I say it is a cry of wolf, with no wolf threatening the fold 
at all. " Oh ! fuse in New York and New Jersey, or Pennsylva- 
nia, for there they are weak !" How about Georgia? What does 
Mr. Breckinridge say to that? How about Virginia? How 
about South Carolina? What of Alabama? What of Mississip- 
pi? There is no fusion there; it is war to the knife between the 
Union savers on both sides. (Laughter.) But up in one or two 
doubtful States in the North, where men are given to bargaining, 
and where political principles are only the counters laid clown on 
the gambling board, there they can make bargains and fuse to 
save the Union (laughter) and their customers. 

Gentlemen, I am disgusted at the suggestion, and I think the 
honorable gentlemen who have given it their assent will regret 
it when it is too late. I will do any thing that is honorable to 
aid the election of John Bell to the presidency. (Great applause.) 
I will not give the lie to all political truth by casting a vote or 
half a vote for men with whom I differ on every political ques- 
tion. (Continued applause.) In the presence of a common ene- 
my, politics is silent ; but as long as it is a question of politics, 
my duty requires me to vote for men in whom I have confidence 
personally, who I suppose will pursue those views of policy that 
I and my friends believe to be right, and to vote against all who 
are opposed to them. To that extent I will support John Bell ; 
but I will not vote for Mr. Douglas to defeat Mr. Lincoln, nor for 
any other purpose. (Renewed applause.) 

Gentlemen, what good is fusion going to do Mr. Bell? If they 
really want to elect him, and not merely to frighten weak people 
into giving a Democrat a chance of being elected before the House 



180 SPEECH BEFORE THE ELECTORS OF THE 

of Kepresentatives or before the Senate, they have a short way to 
do it. If the case is as grievous as they say, and they believe it, 
then it is to them a bagatelle whether Mr. Breckinridge or Mr. 
Bell be President ; and if the Breckinridge men and Douglas 
men throughout the whole body of the South will, upon that one 
ground (thus marking the earnestness of their belief, that the only 
way to avert revolution and disaster, and to keep their homes un- 
sullied and free from the blood of their wives and children, is to 
defeat Mr. Lincoln, and elect somebody that is safer and better), 
vote for John Bell, it would be something that I could appreciate. 
They can mark that feeling in a manner which will speak in tones 
of thunder to every man of common sense north of Mason and 
Dixon's line ; they can do it by just casting their votes for John 
Bell, and by making the avowal that he shall be President if their 
united votes can make him so. And they can say that if they 
fail there, then, if Mr. Lane does not come before the Senate, but 
Mr. Everett does, they, the Democrats, will vote Mr. Everett into 
the presidential chair. (Great applause.) Let them say it, and 
we shall begin to believe that they are in earnest. 

New York politicians are very well content, as they say, to de- 
feat Mr. Lincoln, and let a Democrat be elected. They are not 
proposing to aid Mr. Bell, nor can it. It only humbles his party; 
it deprives it of power in the future ; it almost puts an end to the 
possibility of its ever being powerful in a State where it has been 
made a subject of barter and sale upon 'change. Who can fling 
back a Democrat's charge of bargain and corruption? Who here- 
after can ever cast in the teeth of the Democrats their covering 
up their divisions by compromises? What becomes of the per- 
petual assault upon them, that in the South they have one opin- 
ion, and in the North another ; that in the South they are ex- 
treme slavery men, and in the North have Free-Soilers in their 
ranks, who receive their highest honors? Who hereafter can 
ever cast the imputation on them that the Kansas-Nebraska Act 
was supported with one signification in the North and another in 
the South? Are not the mouths of those who, differing from Mr. 
Douglas and Mr. Breckinridge on these very points, yet agree to 
give Mr. Douglas say twenty-five votes, in order that they may 
buy ten votes for Mr. Bell — are not their mouths sealed forever ? 

Let us work it out, gentlemen, in a national point of view. Is 
it wise thus to act? Where does it send the election? If sue- 



FOURTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT OF MARYLAND. 181 

cessful, it sends it to the House of Eepresentatives. There was a 
time — I hope it has not passed, but I fear that the course of policy 
which has been pursued by a portion of Mr. Bell's friends has ren- 
dered it now almost impossible — there was a time when, had the 
election failed out of doors, and Mr. Lincoln been defeated, Mr. 
Bell would have gotten, in my judgment, and gotten cheerfully, 
the vote of every Eepublican State in the lower House. The in- 
sane method of assault upon and misrepresentation of Mr. Lin- 
coln's opinions, of the purposes of his party, have, I fear, put an 
end to the possibility of a single vote from that quarter, if the 
election should go to the House of Eepresentatives. In my judg- 
ment, it will be an impossibility to elect any body there, such is 
the division of parties. The Eepublicans have not a majority ; 
the Democrats have not a majority ; the Americans have not a 
majority. 

The Eepublicans and the People's party have fifteen States. 
Possibly they might buy two, under the enormous pressure of 
the occasion. (Laughter.) The Democrats have enough to elect, 
if they can get all the American States, together with Oregon and 
California, which now belong to them in the House. Whether 
they will go that way or not, it is not my province here to say ; 
but it is perfectly certain that the Democratic States will not go 
for Mr. Bell. Does any body think they will? Look at the 
speaker's election. Do not forget things that have occurred with- 
in a few months past. Go and examine that list, and tell me 
whether there is a single Democratic State that, under these cir- 
cumstances, will cast its vote in the House for John Bell. Then 
there is no election, and this accompanied, probably, with such 
scenes of violence and tumult as possibly men of greater firmness 
than I have may desire to encounter, but from which I pray to 
be delivered. I have gone through two contests in the House of 
Eepresentatives for the election of the comparatively unimportant 
office of speaker with the House divided as it is divided now. I 
have seen these scenes of violence ; I have heard words of men- 
ace ; I have looked from day to day to some outbreak that would 
drench that hall in blood, and be the beginning of a real (and not 
a newspaper) revolution in the country ; but, by the infinite bless- 
ing of Providence, that danger has been averted. I will not rush 
upon the bosses of His buckler, and tempt Him too far. I will 
not try that House of Eepresentatives again to do the business 



182 SPEECH BEFORE THE ELECTORS OF THE 

which the people ought to do, in their majesty and in their calm- 
ness. (Applause.) I will not tempt them with the immense 
bribes that can be urged — with the intensity of political passions 
excited to the uttermost — with the fierceness of men, some of 
them, possibly, only too willing to convert a political into a revo- 
lutionary strife in that hall. I do not wish to see the immense 
temptations of a presidential election forced on the House of Kep- 
resentatives without a necessity, and only in the last resort — some- 
thing to be shunned, and not to be sought for — something to be 
trembled over whenever it comes — something to be thankful to 
God for if it shall pass without civil violence. 

And what next ? If there be no election by the House when 
the 4th of March comes, who is the President ? The Vice-Presi- 
dent, elected by the Senate. Who are in the Senate ? A clear 
Democratic majority. If Mr. Lane's name goes to the Senate, of 
course he will be by them cheerfully elected President. But sup- 
pose Mr. Everett's name goes to the Senate? Oh, say the confi- 
ding New Yorkers, he will be elected by the Democratic senators. 
Well, gentlemen, I should go for credulity somewhere else than 
the stock exchange. Expect them to elect Edward Everett! 
Why, gentlemen, they have the game in their own hands. I do 
not expect so much from their liberality. I should rejoice in such 
a result. Nothing, after the terrific scenes in the lower House, 
could give this country such peace, and quiet, and relief as to know 
that, when the wished-for 4th of March shall come, such a man as 
Edward Everett will be in the presidency, no matter by whom or 
how chosen. (Applause.) But I have not that faith in the Dem- 
ocratic senators, and I am not sure they would make an election 
in the Senate, if his name and Mr. Hamlin's should be alone be- 
fore them. 

I think they might prefer rather to wait until the 4th of March, 
let the presidential office be vacant, have a year of interregnum, 
and a new election, in the midst of which, without a head to the 
government, who will tell me what would occur? Or they might 
take the other alternative, doubtful in law, but which they may 
undertake to solve, and therefore may solve to suit themselves ; 
and, instead of having an interregnum, Mr. Breckinridge being 
then a member of the Senate, they may elect him President of 
that body, and treat him as President of the United States after 
the 4th of March. The Constitution of the United States appears 



FOURTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT OF MARYLAND. 183 

to have left a very unfortunate, it may prove some day a very dan- 
gerous gap. It is possible that a construction may close that gap", 
but none has closed it yet. It declares, in the event of the death, 
resignation, or disability of the President and Vice-President hap- 
pening after entrance into office, Congress may declare what offi- 
cer shall discharge the duties of President till removal of the 
disability, or an election. 

Congress has provided that the President of the Senate becomes, 
for the time being, the President, and in his absence the Speaker 
of the House of Eepresentatives becomes the President. But 
there seems to be no provision for a failure to elect both President 
and Vice-President. The Constitution — and the law which was 
intended to provide for the vacancy of the presidency follows the 
language of the Constitution — does not authorize Congress to pro- 
vide for that case. There seems to be no provision any where for 
the case of the presidential office being absolutely vacant at the 
commencement of a term — the case of an absolute failure to elect 
either a President or Vice-President. Whether, in that contin- 
gency, the President pro tempore of'the Senate would assume to 
exercise the powers of President of the United States, or whether 
it would be treated by the Senate (the only legal body existing 
on the 4th of March) as vacant, no mind can now determine; and 
legal arguments may possibly be adduced on both sides. We may 
very well rest assured that the majority of the Senate will settle 
it in whichever way will best suit their interests. It rests with 
them ; it rests with no one else ; you and I have no power over 
it. When the matter goes to the Senate, if they see fit to make 
no election, we are pushed upon this dangerous alternative, a va- 
cant or a disputed presidency. 

If the people wish to run afoul of these difficulties, well and 
good. They were not originally intended to be made by bargain- 
ing politicians. The provision of the Constitution is for a case of 
accident or failure, after a bona fide effort of the people to elect, 
not for a conspiracy of a few politicians in a corner, in one State 
of the United States, to adjourn their political difficulties and their 
personal hatreds into the halls of Congress. I therefore enter my 
protest solemnly against any such style of electioneering. Others 
may engage in it. In the State of New York it is none of my 
business. I am not called upon to vote for Mr. Douglas or Mr. 
Breckinridge, and I have nothing more to say about it, except 



184 SPEECH BEFORE THE ELECTORS OF THE 

that it is with them ; but it is not our style, here in Maryland, of 
standing to our principles, and conducting our canvass, and doing 
our best to elect our own candidates. (Great applause.) 

What I have said, gentlemen, covers the exposition I desired to 
make to you this evening. I am aware that there is a great cry 
about sectionalism, and a great scramble for the vacant title of 
national. I wish, gentlemen, that there were a national candidate 
for the presidency. I wish there were a really national party — 
not merely one which has principles that will suit the whole 
land, but one whose power extended unbroken from North to 
South, as did the Whig party in its days of glory. (Applause.) 
I trust that, ere I die, I shall again see the lines of these divisions 
obliterated. But when people talk about sectionalism, and one 
party casts upon another the imputation of being sectional, I am 
free, for my part, to say that they are all sectional, in any proper 
sense. Mr. Douglas — is he a national candidate ? He is, it would 
seem, the regular nominee of the Democratic party ; but the Demo- 
cratic party is not the nation ; for the regular Democratic party 
is as much a whole party as a man is whole when cloven by a sa- 
bre from head to heels. Where is his strength? In the North! 
He has a few supporters in the South, it is true. Mr. Breckin- 
ridge — is he a national candidate? He has great strength in the 
South. Whether it will be as powerful there as he supposes, re- 
mains to be seen. Circumstances now indicate that somebody 
else will have a say in political matters in the South besides the 
Democrats hereafter; but his strength is in the South. In the 
North, it is the shrunk shank of a decrepit old man. Mr. Lin- 
coln's strength is undoubtedly in the North; he has supporters 
in some of the border slave States. Is not Mr. Bell's strength in 
the South, although he has supporters sporadically over the whole 
North ? 

Gentlemen, it is the misery of our condition that, turn wherever 
we may, we find that this infernal strife has split every body into 
a thousand pieces, and no man can tell where to find the piece 
that belongs to him. (Laughter.) Nay, more, gentlemen, if I 
may be allowed to quote words which I heard in a sacred place, 
from a very eloquent gentleman [Eev. Mr. Stockton], whom doubt- 
less many of you have heard in the pulpit here in Baltimore, I 
say of the condition of the people of this country and its party, 
especially of that great opposition party to the Democrats which 



FOURTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT OF MARYLAND. 185 

now is rent into fragments and struggling together, as he said of 
the Christian religion — that the vase in which the precious spirit 
of Christianity was held had been broken by sectarian strife into 
so many pieces, that not only was its beauty marred and gone, 
and its precious essence poured out and lost, but that he who, on 
a mission of love, attempted to collect its fragments and put them 
together, was in danger, in the attempt to reconstruct the vase, of 
cutting his fingers. It is the danger — it is the sickness of the 
times ; and, instead of attemptng to cure it, men who ought to 
know better are acting so as to aggravate it. The patient is in a 
fever, and they wrap him up in blankets. LTis blood is boiling, 
and they dose him with strong drinks and fire-water, and call 
that — curing ! 

Gentlemen, there is a degree of timidity that is, of all things in 
my j udgment, the most dangerous in political life. Half the blood 
that was shed in the French Eevolution was shed from sheer ter- 
ror. It was not courage, it was not ferocity, it was sheer terror, 
that made them cut their neighbors' throats to-day, lest those, 
neighbors should cut theirs to-morrow. That is the state of mind 
in which the conduct of too many in this canvass tends to throw 
the people of the United States. I lift my voice against it. 

Whether these sentiments are popular here or not is to me a 
matter of secondary moment. I have a duty to perform to my- 
self as well as to you. I agree with that most honorable and dis- 
tinguished gentleman, my friend, Mr. Millson, of Norfolk, who, in 
his late letter, said, if I am not mistaken, that he thought it his 
duty to warn his constituents, as well when there was danger of 
invasion of their rights as when, in point of fact, there was none. 
And, acting upon that high principle, I say here now, this night, 
that peace is within our grasp, if we only see fit to hold fast to it. 
If we choose to encourage war, we may encourage it too far. 

Gentlemen, there has been a sort of hesitation on the part of 
the opponents of the Democratic party to meet them directly in 
the eye, to make formally the issue with them as to the correctness 
and safety of their principles and policy, and their mode of con- 
ducting the government. And the reason the opposition have 
failed in other parts of the South is, in my judgment, because they 
have not met the Democrats in that way ; the reason that we have 
not failed in Maryland is because we have not been afraid to strike 
a blow that would overthrow our enemy. (Applause.) It only 



186 SPEECH BEFORE THE ELECTORS, ETC. 

requires that there should be energy and union, and the day is 
ours. 

Gibbon tells us that, as Christianity progressed and spread as 
far as Egypt, the idols roused the ire of the faithful. There was 
at Alexandria an image of Serapis, which superstitious faith in 
ancient prophecies protected from their iconoclastic rage. 

" It was confidently affirmed that, if any impious hand should dare to violate the 
majesty of the god, the heavens and the earth would instantly return to their original 
chaos. An intrepid soldier, animated by zeal, and armed with a mighty battle-axe, 
ascended the ladder; and even the Christian multitude expected with some anxiety 
the event of the combat. He aimed a vigorous stroke against the cheek of Se- 
rapis ; the cheek fell to the ground ; the thunder was still silent, and both the heav- 
ens and the earth continued to preserve their accustomed order and tranquillity. 
The victorious soldier repeated his blows ; the huge idol was overthrown and broken 
in pieces, and the limbs of Serapis were ignominiously dragged through the streets 
of Alexandria. His mangled carcass was burnt in the amphitheatre, amid the 
shouts of the populace ; and many persons attribute their conversion to this discov- 
ery of the impotence of their tutelar deity." 

Gentlemen, smite fearlessly the Democratic party ! The Union 
will survive its fragments. (Enthusiastic applause.) 



ADDRESS TO THE VOTERS OF THE FOURTH 
CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT. 

The election in November, 18G0, resulted in the choice of Mr. Lincoln, 
and the success of the Republican party. The leaders in the South now 
set about the work of making good the threats which had thus proved 
useless for again driving the North and West to submission. Unwilling 
to afford a breathing space or moment for reflection to the people, which 
they knew must prevent the consummation of such suicidal folly, they 
at once, the result of the election being ascertained, proceeded to cany 
out the conspiracy. The first cry was raised in Charleston, and the Gov- 
ernor of South Carolina at once recommended to the Legislature that 
steps should be tnken for the assembling of a " Sovereign Convention." 
Similar proceedings were had in the Gulf States, and every where 
throughout the South the emissaries of sedition, secession, and disunion 
were traveling to and fro to finish the work they had undertaken. The 
Secretary of War of the United States (Floyd) had joined the conspira- 
cy, and had accumulated large quantities of arms and munitions of war 
at the arsenals, forts, and military posts belonging to the United States 
in the Southern States, and had, at the same time, in pursuance of the 
wishes of the Southern conspirators, removed all the larger garrisons 
from those posts, and sent them to the Northwest, and to other remote 
and not easily accessible points. 

The militia in the Southern States were called out, were armed, uni- 
formed, and drilled. Their cities and chief towns were filled with vol- 
unteers and armed men, called out " to defend the State from invasion," 
and " to drive back the Abolition and Black Republican hordes." 

The people of the Northern and Western States could not at first be 
brought to believe that the attempt at disunion would really be made. 
They had heard, on many previous occasions, the same threats by South 
Carolina, which had failed cither before the resolution of Andrew Jackson 
or the good sense of the Southern people. And now they saw no more 
cause for alarm in the South than before ; they readily, therefore, supposed 
the tumult would be quieted by the firmness of the federal government 
and on appeal to the Southern popular vote. They were ignorant of the 
extent, of the violence, of the intimidation of the conspiracy, of the num- 
bers of the conspirators, of their positions in the cabinet, and in the high- 
est offices of the government. To this state of ignorance rapidly succeeded 



188 ADDRESS TO THE VOTERS OF THE 

one of alarm and anxiety, as other Southern States prepared to abet 
South Carolina, when the Congress met on the 3d of December. When 
the President's Message was delivered, the country was surprised by the 
announcement that, if federal officers within a State should all resign, 
or be -prevented by state legislation from executing the laws of the United 
States, and such State should undertake to withdraw from the confeder- 
acy, there was no power given to the Executive, or " delegated by the 
Constitution to the Congress," to use force, in case of necessity, to com- 
pel the execution of the federal laws ; that, even if Congress possessed 
this power, " the object of which doubtless would be the preservation of 
the Union," yet the exercise thereof, when indispensable, would be the 
surest means of destroying what it alone could uphold ; and that the 
"confederacy" (meaning the United States) was afflicted with a deep- 
seated inherent defect, or fatal mistake, as regards the propriety of the 
power, if given, in its Constitution. To remedy this, after quoting the 
Virginia Resolutions of 1799, Mr. Buchanan thought "an explanatory 
amendment" of the Constitution was advisable, and exhibited the follow- 
ing prescription : 

1. An express recognition of the right of property in slaves in the 
States where it now exists, or may hereafter exist. 

2. The duty of protecting this right in all the common Territories, 
throughout their territorial existence, and until they shall be admitted 
as States into the Union, with or without slavery, as their Constitutions 
may prescribe. 

3. A like recognition of the right of the master to have his slave, who 
has escaped from one State to another, restored and " delivered up" to 
him ; and of the validity of the Fugitive Slave Law, enacted for this pur- 
pose, together with a declaration that all State laws impairing or defeat- 
ing this right are violations of the Constitution, and are consequently 
null and void. 

On the 4th of December the House resolved that so much of the Pres- 
ident's Message as relates to the present perilous condition of the coun- 
try be referred to a special committee of one from each State. On the 
6th Mr. Davis was named as the member from Maryland, and Mr. Cor- 
win, of Ohio, was chairman. 

On the 21st the representatives from South Carolina announced their 
withdrawal, as a consequence of the ordinance by which " the people of 
South Carolina, in their sovereign capacity, had resumed the powers 
heretofore delegated by them to the Federal government of the United 
States." The same performance was gone through by the Mississippi 
delegation on the 12th of January; by the majority of the Alabama 
delegation on the 21st; by Georgia (Mr. Hill resigned) on the 23d; by 
Florida (in the Senate) on the 25th; and on the 5 th of February by the 
Louisiana representatives, with the exception of Mr. Bouligny. 



FOURTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT. 189 

In view of the condition of affairs at New Year, 18G1, Mr. Davis 
wrote from Washington the following letter to his constituents of the 
Fourth District of Maryland : 

January 2, 18G1. 

It is my right and my duty as your representative to warn you 
of the danger which threatens the destruction of the government, 
and to overwhelm you beneath its ruins. 

The first act of the drama of revolution was opened in South 
Carolina. 

Ambitious and restless men, availing themselves of factitious 
fear which they have inspired, and sectional passions which they 
have inflamed, are conspiring the overthrow of the government. 
They hope to found a Southern Confederacy on the fragments of 
the United States of America. 

Maryland has been formally asked to join a Southern Confed- 
eracy. The advocates of ruin speciously deny their treasonable 
plans under the form of Southern prejudice, and ask if Maryland 
will desert the South and join the North. But that is not the 
question which Maryland is called on to answer. 

Maryland is now joined to both the free and the slave States, 
under the wisest Constitution, and by the best government the 
world ever saw. 

That government has never wronged her, or failed to protect 
her. The formation of a Southern Confederacy must be preceded 
by the destruction of that government. Till it is broken up and 
its armies defeated, there can be no Southern Confederacy. Mary- 
land is therefore asked, not whether she prefers to enter a North- 
ern or a Southern Confederacy, but she is asked to form a coali- 
tion to break up and destroy the Constitution which Washington 
founded, and to plunge into the horrors of a civil war, for the 
purpose of creating a Southern Confederacy. 

That is the true question you have to consider, for peaceful se- 
cession is a delusion ; and if you yield to the arts now employed 
to delude you, the soil of Maryland will be trampled by armies 
struggling for the national capital. The only question is, Will 
you fight to maintain or to destroy the existing government ? 

The interests of Maryland are indissolubly connected with the 
integrity of the United States ; any division of the confederacy is 
to her fatal. 

Maryland has not an interest that will survive the government 



190 ADDRESS TO THE VOTERS OF 

under the Constitution. No matter what new combinations arise, 
whether Maryland stand alone, or unites her fate to any new con- 
federacy on her northern or her southern border, she is utterly 
ruined and prostrate for this generation at least. When she will 
revive, God only knows. 

If the present government be destroyed, Maryland slaveholders 
lose the only guarantee for the return of their slaves. Every com- 
mercial line of communication is severed. Custom-house barriers 
arrest her merchants at every frontier. Her commerce on the 
ocean is the prey of every pirate, or the sport of every maritime 
power. Her great railroad loses every connection which makes 
it valuable. If two republics divide the territory of the United 
States, Maryland is ruined whichever she join. If the South, her 
slaves will walk over the Pennsylvania line unmolested. The 
African slave-trade will reduce their market value below the cost 
of raising or supporting them ; and, if they did not abscond, they 
would be abandoned by their masters. 

Free trade will open every port, and cotton and woolen facto- 
ries, and the iron and machine works of Maryland would be pros- 
trate before European competition. The expenses of govern- 
ment must be doubled by the necessity of a large standing army, 
for all the conditions of present security will be gone ; and a great 
Northern power, divided from us by an air-line, will be an ever- 
impending danger. 

In the war of separation, and even after, Maryland will be an 
outgoing province, without a fortification or a natural boundary, 
always overrun at the first sound of arms, incapable of being de- 
fended by the weaker power, of which she will form a part, whose 
natural line of defense must be the Potomac, and on this side of 
which no Southern army would venture a decisive battle. 

The hope that Baltimore will be the emporium of such a re- 
public is a delusion too ridiculous to need refutation. Nothing 
intended for the South will ever pass Norfolk, and from the West 
we will be severed by custom-houses, duties, and political antipa- 
thies in favor of New York. 

Is not a Southern republic ruin to Maryland? Joining a 
Northern one is equally so, if stated lines define the limits of the 
two republics. The slave interest will be immediately destroyed ; 
the great railroad to the West is cut off at Harper's Ferry ; and 
Baltimore becomes a tributary to the Central Pennsylvania Koad. 



THE FOURTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT. 191 

All the Southern and Southwestern trade is gone, and her foreign 
commerce can seek the ocean only by favor of Virginia, or under 
the guns of a powerful navy. In war still we are the frontier, 
and our soil will be desolated by the contending armies. 

Our manufacturing interests will be better secured, our military 
frontier better protected by the Potomac, our foreign commerce 
will have the protection of a maritime power, and we shall be free 
from the humiliation of a European protectorate; but the sudden 
and absolute destruction of the slaveholding interest, and the rad- 
ical change in the relations of our population, will give a shock 
to our internal quiet and prosperity that neither this nor the next 
generation will recover from. 

But there can be no such division of this Confederacy by ex- 
isting State lines. The present territory has been acquired and 
divided to be used as a whole, bound by the common ties of the 
Constitution, and the course of trade is arranged accordingly. 
Break it in any part, and it will fly into a thousand pieces like a 
Prince Eupert's drop. 

Western Virginia belongs to the Valley of the Mississippi. 
Virginia can never withdraw from the existing Confederacy un- 
divided ; her western boundary will be the Blue Eidge. Marj r - 
land will be swayed by adverse forces, which will probably give 
her northern and western counties to Pennsylvania; her penin- 
sular to Virginia, unless a civil war shall first have desolated and 
subdued them. 

Whatever the sympathies of her commercial emporium may be 
in the present political heats, yet, when the conditions which gave 
rise to them are gone with the present government, her interests 
will find a voice, and a decisive voice, in determining her future 
relations. What they shall be I trust in God may never be de- 
cided. 

With these consequences before their eyes, there are yet men 
in Maryland who seem madly bent on revolution, and conspira- 
tors beyond her limits instigate and aid their efforts. To the suc- 
cess of their schemes the convocation of the Legislature is essen- 
tial. 

In securing that object many unite who are strangers to their 
purposes, and blind to the consequences of what they are doing 
— men who honestly think there is danger it might avert, or that 
there ought to be an agreement or understanding with Virginia, 



192 ADDRESS TO THE VOTERS OF 

or who are moved by sympathy with, neighboring agitators, or 
wish to gain party advantages, or play a political game, or are in- 
terested in the corrupt and active lobby. They are all the allies, 
conscious or unconscious, of the revolutionists. 

The revolutionary agitators, existing elsewhere in the republic, 
will be aggravated by a call of the Maryland Legislature. It will 
look like sympathy with the revolutionary States. It will dis- 
hearten the friends of the government in those States. It will in- 
spire the revolutionists in the Central States, now in hopeless mi- 
nority, with new hopes. It will tend to destroy the moderate 
feelings of the free States in dealing with the existing discontent. 
It will greatly embarrass the President, who must maintain the 
authority of the laws, and is entitled to the undivided support of 
the people of Maryland for that purpose. 

The halls of legislation will immediately become the focus of 
revolutionary conspiracy. Under specious pretexts, the people 
will be implicated, by consultations with other States, by concert- 
ed plans, by inadmissible demands, by extreme and offensive pre- 
tensions, in a deeply-laid scheme of simultaneous revolt, in the 
event of the inevitable failure to impose on the free States the ul- 
timatum of the slave States. Maryland will find herself severed 
from more than half the States, plunged in anarchy, and wrapped 
in the flames of civil war, waged by her against the government 
in which we now glor}^. 

In the face of such consequences, what justification, what ex- 
cuse is there for convening the Legislature? Within its consti- 
tutional powers it can do nothing, and there is nothing for it to do. 

The only danger to Maryland in the present crisis is that re- 
bellious States may destroy the United States, and that to her is 
absolute ruin ; but against that her only and sufficient security is 
the power of the United States government, supported by the 
loyal devotion of the people outside of the disaffected States. 
Maryland can not suppress revolution in South Carolina, and 
neither South Carolina nor any other State threaten^ Maryland 
with invasion or any other danger. Congress and the President 
are vested exclusively with the power to enforce the laws of the 
Union, and every person in Maryland, as in all the other central 
slave States, is bound to obey the laws of the President for that 
, purpose, any thing in their laws to the contrary notwithstanding. 
The Legislatures can, therefore, do nothing in the matter. 



THE FOURTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT. 193 

But many persons clamor for the Legislature in order that it 
may agree with Virginia, or with other slave States, on a course 
of conduct. 

The Constitution forbids any agreement between Maryland and 
any other States for any purpose. 

Not only does the 10th section of the first article of the Consti- 
tution declare that "no State shall enter into any treaty, alliance, 
or confederation," but it also says " no State shall, without the 
consent of Congress, enter into any agreement or compact with another 
State, or with & foreign power ; and Article VI. declares this Con- 
stitution to be the supreme law of the land of Virginia as well as 
of Maryland; and that the members of the several State Legisla- 
tures, and all executive and judicial officers of the several States, 
shall be bound by oath or affirmation to. support this Constitution." 

Are the members of the Legislature to violate their oath ? If 
not, there can be no consultation ; if they are, then it is not to 
preserve the Constitution, but to promote its destruction by rev- 
olution, that the Legislature is to be convened. 

The Legislature can, within its constitutional power, do noth- 
ing. It is as unconstitutional to make an agreement with Vir- 
ginia as it would be with France. 

An agreement to consult to have any common purpose, any 
concerted action, is expressly forbidden ; for, if allowed, the United 
States might be defied by a coalition too powerful to be suppress- 
ed without arms, and the laws of the Union be enforced only at 
the hazard of civil war. 

The prevailing discontents, the inflamed state of public feeling, 
which now prompt men and states to consult, are the very dan- 
gers the constitutional prohibition was intended to guard against. 
Southern States only now think of a coalition ; but what should 
we say of a free-state coalition to repeal the constitutional guaran- 
tee of the slavery interest? 

A Convention of the central slave States is equally unconstitu- 
tional, dangerous, and needless. Whatever it can do, which is 
not unconstitutional and mischievous, can be better done without 
it. Is it to propose amendments to the Constitution ? Nobody 
authorized to amend could even consider the proposal. 

But Congress, on the application of the Legislatures of two 
thirds of the States, can call a Convention of all the States, and 
that can remedy every grievance. Is it to secure agreement on 

N 



194 ADDRESS TO THE VOTERS OF 

the same amendments? Their representatives in Congress are 
the constitutional representatives of the States in the only body 
where the States are permitted to consult, and they can there 
move any amendments they may concur in thinking necessary; 
and those amendments will, under the Constitution, be formally 
sent for approval to all the States. Is it to agree upon demands 
to be made on the free States, on refusal of which nothing is to 
follow? Then why assemble it? 

But is the purpose of it to combine the central slave States in 
demands on the free States, accompanied with the menace of rev- 
olution, in the event of their refusal to submit to the dictation? 
Then the Convention is a treasonable assembly to levy war for 
the overthrow of the government. 

Such a consultation among the central slave States, where no 
voice from the free States will be heard, and' their feelings and 
wishes will be wholly disregarded, and where the more extreme 
opinions of the slave States will predominate, is likely to result in 
a demand of concessions wholly impossible to be maintained, ac- 
companied by the implied pledge not to be satisfied with any 
thing less ; and on the refusal of the free States to submit to terms 
thus dictated without any consultation with them, the revolution- 
ists will precipitate the whole of the consulting States into revolu- 
tion. This I believe to be the most natural result of the proposed 
consultation. I presume the revolutionists have not been so dull 
as to overlook it. 

Maryland is not ready to be entrapped. Her people are the 
best guardians of their own interests, duty, and honor. It is for 
them now to demand of those who counsel a Convention of the 
central slave States to specify whether there are, in the words of 
President Jackson, " any acts so plainly unconstitutional and so in- 
tolerably oppressive" to them that they are willing to tear the gov- 
ernment to pieces in the pursuit of redress. 

If there be such acts, then convene the Legislature ; assemble a 
Convention ; concert with Virginia measures of resistance in de- 
fault of redress ; but also let the people prepare their hearts for 
war, and their fields for desolation, and their children for slaugh- 
ter. Let them prepare for an era of proscriptions, confiscations, 
and exiles, to be followed by anarchy, and be closed by the rude 
despotism of the sword. 
* But if there be no such grievances which justify, in the eye of 



THE FOURTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT. 195 

reason, encountering those consequences, then let the people of 
Maryland not allow themselves to be seduced by insidious wiles, 
under plausible disguises, into measures which, whatever may be 
their professed objects, tend to such results, and must bring them 
forth. 

Will any one propose gravely to rush on such ruin because a 
few negroes have run away and not been caught — because some 
liberty bills have been passed and never acted on — because a mob, 
once in a while, has resisted an unpopular law — because Maryland 
has been in a minority on a presidential election ? Or are there 
any other grievances for which revolution is considered the only 
adequate remedy ? 

Is it the personal liberty bills ? 

They exist in only a few of the free States. They do not exist 
in any one of the free States coterminous with the slave States. 
They are all remote from us, where a negro hardly ever goes. It 
is not known that they ever aid a single negro to escape. The 
courts of the United States have always declared them void, and 
it is only in the courts that a free country enforces any law. It 
is probable they soon will be repealed, and vanish with the tem- 
porary excitement which occasioned them. 

They have been suffered to exist more than two administra- 
tions without any one in Maryland dreaming of revolutionary 
redress. 

Is it the failure to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law ? 

The States are not charged with that duty at all. It is imposed 
on the United States government, and the right to claim fugitive 
slaves exists only so long as the Constitution exists. It is certain 
that the dissolution of the government repeals and annuls this 
law, and that is therefore no redress. 

If mobs have occasionally interfered to rescue fugitives, they 
have been successful only occasionally. The guilty parties have 
frequently been punished by both State and federal courts, and it 
is probable that they can be entirely avoided by a reasonable 
change in the law itself. Is a government to be destroyed because 
a mob makes a rescue ? 

Are we to make a revolution because we can not catch a fugi- 
tive in a free State, whom we have already failed to catch in a 
slave State? 

But the Territories, they must be adjusted; the rights of the 



196 ADDRESS TO THE VOTERS OF 

South must be acknowledged. Are the people of Maryland 
dreaming of a revolution in the event of a failure to resettle the 
Territorial Question to the satisfaction of Southern secessionists? 

Is Maryland so discontented with the actual condition of the 
Territories that she will aid in destroying the government unless 
it be changed ? I will not believe in such madness. 
' No change has taken place since Mr. Clay's adjustment of 1850 
but at the instance of the slave States ; that change was the Kan- 
sas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which repealed the Missouri line, in 
order to substitute what was called the principles of the act of 
1850 ; and at that time all the Territories were in fact free. 

Slavery has, in point of fact, been introduced into New Mexico 
by the people under the act of 1850. Slavery has not been in- 
troduced into Utah, nor Kansas, nor Nebraska, under the law of 
1854. The only Territory south of 36° 30' is New Mexico; all 
the residue of the Territories are north of that line. Now we are 
in danger of civil war unless, by an amendment of the Constitu- 
tion, we establish slavery south of 36° 30' — not merely in New 
Mexico, but in all territory hereafter to be acquired. No man 
who values the peace of the country can assent to that bribe to 
filibustering. 

But, touching the Territory now to be disposed of, while the 
people of the free States will refuse the proposed amendment be- 
cause it makes them establish slavery, they will probably agree to 
make New Mexico a State, and that removes it beyond the med-' 
dling of Congress. 

The Committee of Thirty-three have, on motion of Mr. Adams, 
agreed to recommend it, and New Mexico includes all the terri- 
tory south of 36° 30'. 

Shall we break up the government because the free States re- 
fuse to do what Mr. Clay refused to do touching this Terri- 
tory? 

Fellow-citizens, the Territorial Question is of no practical im- 
portance to you ; it is merely the pretext to entangle you in the 
plots against your peace. If by common consent any change can 
be made which will silence clamor, or soothe the sensibilities, or 
satisfy the jealousies excited by recent contest, let that change be 
made. But that is the only interest you have in any change ; 
and if none can be obtained of that character, it is our policy to let 
the question alone, and to make others let it alone. 



THE FOURTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT. 197 

The existing condition of the Territories is better than agita- 
tion for any change. 

If discontented men attempt to destroy the government because 
it is not changed to suit them, the righ^ and the duty, the highest 
interest and the loyal honor of Maryland, require her to sustain 
the laws of the United States and the Constitution, which are her 
only safety. Let us not countenance revolutionary violence to 
redress imaginary wrongs by impossible measures. 

Mr. Adams's proposition to admit New Mexico as a State, and 
to amend the Constitution so as to prohibit any chance in it here- 
after by which slavery in the States can be affected, unless upon 
the proposal of a slave State, concurred in by all the States ; the 
repeal of the liberty bills ; and a just modification of the Fugitive 
Slave Law, ought to close the Slavery controversy forever — cer- 
tainly till some rash conquest shall reopen it. » 

Or are we to destroy the Constitution because Mr. Lincoln has 
been elected according to its provisions ? 

The existing prostration of commerce and industry ; the idle 
ships ; the accumulated merchandise and produce ; the unem- 
ployed artisans, laborers, and mechanics ; the stinted allowance of 
their families ; and the desolate prospect of the winter — these are 
the points, not of the acts of South Carolina, nor of the threat- 
ened revolution in two or three of the Gulf States, but of the 
doubtful loyalty of the Central States — of the threats of designing 
politicians to resist the government unless their extreme preten- 
sions are acknowledged — of the agitation of men's minds occa- 
sioned by extraordinary elections — the assembling of Legisla- 
tures — the meeting of State Conventions — and the menace of a 
Convention of the central slave States to array them in opposi- 
tion to the United States. Maryland alone is guiltless of this 
great error. Her laboring people are the victims of agitations for 
which they are not responsible, aggravated by the restless and 
ambitious policy of certain of their fellow-citizens. 

The firm attitude of Maryland is now the chief hope of peace. 
If you firmly adhere to the United States against all enemies, re- 
solved to obey the Constitution and see it obeyed, your example 
will arrest the spirit of revolution, and greatly aid the govern- 
ment in restoring, without bloodshed, its authority. If Maryland 
yield to this revolutionary clamor, she will be overcome in a few 
months in the struggle for the national capital ; and her young 



198 ADDRESS TO THE VOTERS, ETC. 

men, torn from the pursuits of peace, excluded from the closed 
work -shop and counting-house, must shoulder the musket to 
guard their homes at the cost of fraternal blood. 

I confidently trust that,the people of the Fourth Congressional 
District will, in this grave emergency, give new proofs of their 
devotion to the Constitution, and their superiority to envy, fear, 
and delusion. 

Your fellow-citizen, Henry Winter Davis. 



THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIR- 
TY-THREE. 

On the 14th of January the special Committee of Thirty-three pre- 
sented their Report, and the discussion thereon began on the 21st. In 
that committee, on the 7th of January, an amendment proposed by Mr. 
Davis was adopted to the Fugitive Slave Bill (afterward reported to and 
rejected by the House), securing to the fugitive slave a trial hyjury in the 
state to which he was returned. On the 18th of December the commit- 
tee had previously adopted, on motion of Mr. Davis, a resolution, to be 
reported to the House, calling upon the several states to revise their stat- 
utes, with a view to repeal such as clearly conflicted with the Constitu- 
tion or laws of the United States (Personal Liberty Bills). 

On the 28th the President submitted the propositions from the Vir- 
ginia General Assembly, adopted on the 19th, proposing a Peace Con- 
ference of commissioners from each of the states, to be holden in Wash- 
ington on the 4th of February, and declaring that the proposition for 
amendment' of the Constitution, submitted in the United States Senate 
by Mr. Crittenden, "so modi/led as that the first article proposed shall 
apply to all territory of the United States now held or hereafter acquired 
soutli of latitude 30° 30', and that African slavery shall be protected 
therein while a Territory ; and that the fourth article shall secure to the 
owners of slaves the right of transit, with their slaves, between and through 
the nou-slaveholding states and territories, constitute the basis of such an 
adjustment as would be accepted by the people of Virginia." 

On the 31st of January Mr. Charles Francis Adams, of Massachusetts, 
delivered a speech, remarkable for ability, candor, and moderation, in sup- 
port of the propositions submitted by the Committee of Thirty-three, in- 
cluding an amendment to the Constitution in these words: 

"Article XII. No amendment of this Constitution having for its object any 
interference, within the stitcs, ivith the relations between their citizens and 
those described in section second of the first article of the Constitution as 
' all other persons,' shall originate with any state that does not recognize 
that relation within its own limits, or shall be valid without the assent of 
every one of the states composing the Union." 

The Peace Conference met on the 5th of February. 

Seven states had now passed formal ordinances of secession, and their 
senators and representatives had withdrawn. Major Anderson was be- 



200 THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE. 

leaguered in Fort Sumter. The " commissioners" from South Carolina 
had come to Washington, "authorized and empowered to treat with the 
government of the United States for the delivery of the forts, magazines, 
light-houses, and other real estate, with their appurtenances, in the lim- 
its of South Carolina; and also for an apportionment of the public debt, 
and for a division of all other property held by the government of the 
United States as agent of the confederated states, of which South Caro- 
lina was recently a member ; and generally to negotiate as to all other 
measures and arrangements proper to be made and adopted, in the exist- 
ing relation of the parties, and for the continuance of peace and amity 
between this commonwealth and the government at "Washington." They 
demanded of the President the immediate withdrawal of the United States 
troops then in Charleston Harbor. Castle Pinckney and Fort Moultrie 
were occupied by South Carolina militia. The "Palmetto" Hag was 
raised over the United States Custom-IIouse and Post-Ofhcc in Charles- 
ton. The United States Arsenal there was " taken by force of arms," 
and on the 9th of January the steamer Star of the West having the 
United States ensign at the fore, was fired info from a masked battery on 
Morris Island. The navy yard at Pensacola, Forts Barrancas and Pu- 
laski, the United States Arsenal at Augusta (Georgia), the United States 
Mint and Custom-IIouse at, and the forts below New Orleans, and the 
United States revenue cutters, had been seized. The rebel Convention 
had met at Montgomery (Alabama), and even North Carolina had threat- 
ened, by a unanimous declaration of her House of Commons, " to go, if 
reconciliation fails, with the other slave states." 

Such was the condition of affairs when Mr. Davis addressed the 
House on the 7th of February, 18G1, as follows: 

Mr. Speaker, — Wc arc at the end of the insane revel of parti- 
san license which for thirty years has in the United States worn 
the mask of government. We are about to close the masquerade 
by the dance of death. The nations of the world look anxiously 
to see if the people, ere they tread that measure, will come to 
themselves. 

Yet in the early youth of our national life, wc arc alrcad}* ex- 
hausted by premature excesses. The corruption of our political 
maxims has relaxed the tone of public morals, and degraded the 
public authorities from the terror to the accomplices of evil doers. 
Platform for fools — Plunder for thieves — Offices for service — 
Power for ambition, unity in these essentials — Diversity in the 
immaterial matters of policy and legislation — Charity for every 
frailty — The voice of the people is the voice of God : these max- 
ims have sunk into the public mind — have presided at the ad- 



• THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE. 201 

ministration of public affairs, Lave almost effaced the very idea of 
public duty. The government, under their disastrous influence, 
has gradually ceased to fertilize the fields of domestic and useful 
legislation, and pours itself, like an impetuous torrent, along the 
barren ravine of party and sectional strife. It has been shorn of 
every prerogative that wore the austere aspect of authority and 
power. The President, no longer preceded by the fasces and the 
axe, the emblems of supreme authority, greets every popular 
clamor with wreathed smiles and gracious condescension, is de- 
graded to preside in the Palace of the Nation over the distribu- 
tion of spoils among wrangling victors, dedicates his great powers 
to forge or find arms to perpetuate partisan warfare at the expense 
of the public peace. The original ideas of the Constitution have N 
faded from men's minds. That the United States is a govern- 
ment entitled to respect and command ; that the Constitution fur- 
nishes a remedy for every grievance, and a mode of redress for 
every wrong; that the States are limited within their spheres, arc 
charged with no duties to each other, and bear no relation to the 
other States excepting through their common head, the govern- 
ment of the United States; that those in authority, alone, are 
charged with power to repress public disorder and compose the 
public discontents ; restrain the conduct of the people and of the 
States within the barriers of the Constitution — these salutary prin- 
ciples have faded from the popular heart with the great interests 
which the government is charged to protect, and has gradually 
allowed to escape from its grasp. Congress has ceased to regu- 
late commerce, to protect domestic industry, to encourage our 
commercial marine, to regulate the currency, to promote internal 
commerce by internal improvements— almost every power useful 
to the people in its exercise has been denied and abandoned, or 
so limited in its exercise as to be useless — its whole activity has 
been dedicated to expansion abroad, and acquiring and retaining 
power at home till men have forgotten that the Union is a bless- 
ing, and that they owe to the United States allegiance paramount 
to that of their respective States. 

The consequence of this demoralization is, that States, without 
regard to the federal government, assume to stand face to face 
and wage their own quarrels, to adjust their own difficulties, to 
impute to each other every wrong, to insist that individual States 
shall remedy every grievance, and denouncing their failure to do 



202 THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE. 

so as cause of civil war between the States ; and as if the Consti- 
tution were silent and dead, and the power of the Union utterly 
inadequate to keep the peace between them. Unconstitutional 
commissioners flit from State to State, or assemble at the national 
capital to counsel peace or instigate war. Sir, these are the causes 
which lie at the bottom of the present dangers. These causes, 
which have rendered them possible aud made them serious, must 
be removed before they can ever be permanently cured. They 
shake the fabric of our national government. It is to this fearful 
demoralization of the government and the people that we must 
ascribe the disastrous defections which now perplex us with the 
fear of change in all that constituted our greatness. The opera- 
tion of the government has been withdrawn from the great public 
interests in order that competing parties might not be embar- 
rassed in the struggle for power by diversities of opinion upon 
questions of policy ; and the public mind, in that struggle, has 
been exclusively turned on the Slavery Question, which no inter- 
est required to be touched by any department of this government. 
On that subject there are widely marked diversities of opinion 
and interest in different portions of the Confederacy, with few 
mediating influences to soften the collision. In the struggle for 
party power, the two great regions of the country have been 
brought face to face upon this most dangerous of all subjects of 
agitation. The authority of the government was relaxed just 
when its power was about to be assailed, and the people emanci- 
pated from every control ; and their passions, inflamed by the 
fierce struggle for the presidency, were the easj' prey of revolu- 
tionary audacity. 

Within two months after a formal, peaceful, regular election of 
the chief magistrate of the United States, in which the whole 
body of the people of every State competed with zeal for the 
prize, without any new event intervening, without any new griev- 
ances alleged, without any new menaces having been made, we 
have seen, in the short course of one month, a small portion of 
the population of six States transcend the bounds, at a single leap, 
at once of the state and the national Constitutions, usurp the ex- 
traordinary prerogative of repealing the supreme law of the land, 
exclude the great mass of their fellow-citizens from the protection 
of the Constitution, declare themselves emancipated from the ob- 
ligations which the Constitution pronounces to be supreme over 



THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE. 203 

them and over their laws, arrogate to themselves all the preroga- 
tives of independent power, rescind the acts of cession of the pub- 
lic property, occupy the public offices, seize the fortresses of the 
United States confided to the faith of the people among whom 
they were placed, embezzle the public arms concentrated there 
for the defense of the United States, array thousands of men in 
arms against the United States, and actually wage war on the 
Union by besieging two of their fortresses, and firing on a vessel 
bearing, under the flag of the United States, re-enforcements and 
provisions to one of them. The very boundaries of right and 
wrong seem obliterated when we see a cabinet minister deliber- 
ately, for months, engaged in changing the distribution of public 
arms to places in the hands of those about to resist the public 
authority, so as to place within their grasp means of waging war 
against the United States greater than they ever used against a 
foreign foe ; and another cabinet minister, still holding his com- 
mission under the authority of the United States, still a confiden- 
tial adviser of the President, still bound by his oath to support the 
Constitution of the United States, himself a commissioner from 
his own State to another of the United States for the purpose of 
organizing and extending another part of the same great scheme 
of rebellion ; and the doom of the republic seems sealed when the 
President, surrounded by such ministers, permits, without rebuke, 
the government to be betrayed, neglects the solemn warning of 
the first soldier of the age, till almost every fort is a prey to do- 
mestic treason, and accepts assurances of peace in his time at the 
expense of leaving the national honor unguarded. His message 
gives aid and comfort to the enemies of the Union by avowing 
his inability to maintain its integrity ; and paralyzed and stupe- 
fied he stands amid the crash of the falling republic, still mutter- 
ing — not in my time — not in my time — after me the deluge ! 

Sir, history, by her prophet Tacitus, has drawn his character 
for posterity — major p>rivato visus dum privatus fuit et consensu 
omnium capax imperii nisi imperasset. Yes, sir, nisi imperasset, 
James Buchanan might have passed to the grave as one of the 
men of the republic, equal to every station he filled, and not in- 
competent for the highest. The acquisition of supreme power 
has revealed his incapacity, and crowns him with the unenviable 
honor of the chief destroyer of his country's greatness. 

We have, Mr. Speaker, this day to deal in a great measure with 



204 THE KEPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE. 

the consequences of his incapacity. Persons usurping power in 
six or seven States have thrown off their allegiance to the United 
States. It was fondly hoped that it was only temporary — possi- 
bly a desperate contrivance to restore the chief actors to power ; 
but we are now authoritatively informed by the response of South 
Carolina to the kindly messenger from Virginia that their position 
is permanently fixed ; that they desire to have, and will have no 
farther political connection with the United States ; and a distin- 
guished gentleman, until within one month a member of the cab- 
inet of the United States, recently elected President of the revo- 
lutionary Convention at Montgomery, has informed us in his in- 
augural speech that it is their purpose finally to sever their con- 
nection with the United States, and to take all the consequences 
of organizing an independent republic. 

Mr. Speaker, we are driven to one of two alternatives; we must 
recognize — what we have been told more than once upon this 
floor is an accomplished fact — the independence of the rebellious 
States, or we must refuse to acknowledge it, and accept all the re- 
sponsibilities that attach to that refusal. Eecognize them ! aban- 
don the Gulf and coast of Mexico ; surrender the forts of the 
United States ; yield the privilege of free commerce and free in- 
tercourse; strike down the guarantees of the Constitution for our 
fellow-citizens in all that wide region ; create a thousand miles of 
interior frontier to be furnished with internal custom-houses, and 
armed with internal forts, themselves to be a prey to the next ca- 
price of State sovereignty ; organize a vast standing army, ready 
at a moment's warning, to resist aggression ; create upon our south- 
ern boundary a perpetual foothold for foreign powers whenever 
caprice, ambition, or hostility may see fit to invite the despot of 
France or the aggressive power of England to attack us upon our 
undefended frontier ; sever that unity of territory which we have 
spent millions, and labored through three generations to create 
and establish ; pull down the flag of the United States and take a 
lower station among the nations of the earth ; abandon the high 
prerogative of leading the march of freedom, the hope of strug- 
gling nationalities, the terror of frowning tyrants, the boast of the 
world, the light of liberty, to become the sport and prey of des- 
pots whose thrones we consolidate by our fall ; to be greeted by 
Mexico with the salutation, Art thou also become weak as we? 
art thou become like unto us ? This is recognition. 



THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE. 205 

Eefuse to recognize ! We must not coerce a State in the peace- 
ful process of secession. We must not coerce a State engaged in 
the peaceful process of firing into a United States vessel to pre- 
vent the re-enforcement of a United States fort. We must not 
coerce States which, without any declaration of war or any act of 
hostility of any kind, have united, as have Mississippi, Florida, 
and Louisiana, their joint forces to seize a public fortress. We 
must not coerce a State which has planted cannon upon its shores 
to prevent the free navigation of the Mississippi. We must not 
coerce a State which has robbed the United States Treasury. 
This is peaceful secession! 

Mr. Speaker, I do not design to quarrel with gentlemen about 
words. I do not wish to say one word which will exasperate the 
already too much inflamed state of the public mind ; but I say 
that the Constitution of the United States, and the laws made in 
pursuance thereof, must be enforced ; and they who stand across 
the path of that enforcement must either destroy the power of 
the United States, or it will destroy them. (Loud applause in the 
galleries.) I trust in God that any such collision is years, centu- 
ries, yea, thousands of years off. I see no necessity for it. I think 
it may be avoided by prudent administration, till the people shall 
come to themselves. But the laws of the United States provide 
their own method of enforcement, and when they are enforced, 
those who resist must take the consequences. 

I think the revenues may be collected in disaffected ports on 
board United States ships. I think the laws of commerce may be 
enforced by allowing no vessel to pass out unless she has papers 
of the United States on board. The postal routes and arrange- 
ments may be sustained or suspended, as the interests of the gov- 
ernment or the disturbed condition of the localities may require. 
The courts of justice, if needs be, may be supported as they were 
in Utah ; or we may remove the courts, extend the districts over 
several States, and locate the courts in States which are not dis- 
turbed. These are the regular peaceful methods of enforcing the 
laws of the United States. These methods, if pursued, will allow 
time for reflection — cooling time to the people excited by a fierce 
political canvass, and surprised on a sudden unprepared, by revo- 
lutionary contrivances prepared beforehand. We can await the 
inevitable time of division, discord, and resistance to taxation and 
military exactions. 



206 THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE. 

But the government of the United States is vested by the Con- 
stitution with adequate power to meet every emergency. It is re- 
quired to guarantee a republican form of government to every 
State. A government whose executive Legislature and judicial 
officers are not sworn to support the Constitution of the United 
States is mere usurpation, and not a republican government. It 
will never be recognized for any purpose. If the loyal citizens 
of any State, whose authorities have usurped the prerogative of 
repealing the Constitution of the United States, shall see fit to or- 
ganize for themselves a government, the President can recognize 
them, and the President can support them. Among the powers 
granted by the Constitution is the power to suppress insurrection ; 
it does not except insurrections ordered by State authority, and 
they will be suppressed as promptly as others. The Constitution au- 
thorizes Congress to provide for calling forth the militia to enforce 
the laws, and it makes no exception of those laws which a State 
may see fit to oppose ; and if to the regular execution of the laws 
of the United States armed resistance shall be made, the govern- 
ment has authority to disperse those who oppose the enforcement. 
The Constitution forbids any State to keep troops or ships of war 
in time of peace ; and if troops be organized by any State, the 
United States have power to require them to be disbanded, and 
to disperse them if they be not disbanded. If ships of war shall 
be built, they have a right, under the Constitution, to require them 
to be disposed of, or, if that be refused, they may sink them. 
Whether that shall be done is a matter of discretion. If States 
levy troops and attack no one, the United States may well let 
them eat their own heads off. The cost will soon disperse them. 
But if they assail the United States, or other States, or loyal citi- 
zens of the United States in the disaffected State, then the blame 
of collision rests on those who compelled the United States to re- 
sistance. In this manner, without any thing like war upon States, 
without any attempt to do damage to any citizens excepting those 
who may have arrayed themselves in arms against the United 
States, the government can vindicate its authority and maintain 
its power. This is not war. The Constitution calls it enforcing 
the laws. It is no more war than arresting a criminal is war. It 
is supporting the civil power by the military arm against unlaw- 
ful combinations too powerful to be otherwise dealt with. The 
guilt of the actors is not extenuated by State authority, still less 



THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE. 207 

by that of the revolutionary conventions. By their sanction they 
become participators in the guilt, and liable to the punishment of 
the armed actors. War is the struggle between two powers to do 
each other the greatest possible harm, subject only to international 
law. But when the United States suppress an insurrection or en- 
force the laws, they harm only those actually resisting, and them 
only so far as to remove their resistance to the civil arm. Its end 
is their dispersion. The United States carry the Constitution be- 
fore their arms ; its provisions hedge in their bayonets ; and every 
weapon sinks when its authority is admitted. Conquest in war 
is absolute despotism ; the triumph of the United States is the 
restoration of constitutional liberty. 

But, Mr. Speaker, the marvel still remains to be explained how 
it is that, in this free republican land, over so wide a region of 
■country, people hitherto loyal to the United States have so sud- 
denly taken such strange and revolutionary courses. 

First, sir, it is because there is, and has been for years, a revo- 
lutionary faction in many of them, disguised by being mingled in 
the ranks of a great political party, but always working to accom- 
plish its treasonable purposes. 

It is because of the tenacity with which defeated politicians — 
not revolutionists, but acting with them — cling to power, determ- 
ined to rule or to ruin the government. 

They have the power to bring these great disasters upon the 
country only because the popular mind has been aroused and ex- 
cited by fierce discussions upon the topic of slavery, on which the 
Southern people are so justly sensitive. By the grossest misrep- 
resentations of the purposes of the great body of the Northern 
people, by perpetual and reiterated misrepresentation and exag- 
geration of their feelings, a hostile state of feeling has been cre- 
ated throughout a great portion, if not throughout the whole of 
the South, which borders upon revolution itself. A state of fear, 
an undefined dread, a sense of insecurity, has been inspired by the 
course of the political canvass in the South. The mischief has 
been done at home. The mischief has been done by the violent 
struggles of parties for supremacy. Both have striven each to 
blacken their common opponents at the North, by imputing to 
them opinions and purposes which both execrate ; and one has 
imputed sympathy with the same opinions to their political oppo- 
nents at the South. Whatever disturbance exists there, the great, 



208 THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE. 

the main, the substantial cause of it is not the conduct of the peo- 
ple of the free States, but the conduct of the political canvass at 
the South, the course of the debate by Southern gentlemen in this 
House, the mode in which they have, consciously or unconscious- 
ly, exaggerated and blackened the purposes of gentlemen upon 
the other side of the House, and habitually circulated at home 
inflammatory speeches of certain Northern gentlemen, which I 
submit they ought to have known did not represent the feelings 
of the great body of the people of the North, however well they 
may represent that small faction called there "Abolitionists." I 
say that is the real, the chief, the exciting cause of the existing 
disturbances; and, sir, in my judgment, without constitutional 
amendments, or the passage of one law, if gentlemen will only re- 
move the impression that they have erroneously left upon their 
people's minds, if they will only go and say to them what they 
have heard said again and again on this floor by the distinguished 
gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Adams], by the distinguished 
gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Corwin], so often and by so many of 
his colleagues upon this floor, and what is now said still more 
formally by the resolutions adopted by Republican votes in the 
Committee of Thirty-three, and reported by the distinguished gen- 
tleman from Ohio, that there exists no purpose, directly or indi- 
rectly, to disturb or interfere in any manner with, the institution 
of slavery within the States, and that the only question is whether 
it shall go into the poor, miserable, worthless Territory of New 
Mexico or not ; if they will go and tell the people that, there 
would be peace and quiet throughout the whole South within a 
month after they made the explanation. But, sir, from the course 
of debate in this House, I have small hope of that natural, prompt, 
and honest remedy. They who profit by the error will not cor- 
rect it. 

A committee has been raised charged with devising such meas- 
ures as will at once assuage the existing discontents, avoid the 
occasions of future irritation, and tender such guarantees to the 
sensitive interests of the South as, in the absence of those just 
recantations by politicians of the South, will still give peace, quiet, 
and security to the Southern people. I desire, Mr. Speaker, to 
lay before the House, in as plain and brief a manner as I can, the 
results to which the committee charged with that duty have come; 
to compare the remedies that the majority and the minority of 



THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE. 209 

the committee respectively propose, and to contrast the complaints 
and the remedies of the minority with themselves. 

The first cause of irritation is the Personal Liberty Bills. Both 
portions of the committee propose a recommendation that they 
shall be repealed. The votes of the committee and of the House 
on that subject ought to remove every trace of dissatisfaction or 
suspicion. 

Great irritation has grown out of the obstructions to the exe- 
cution of the act for the delivery of fugitives from service. The 
repeal of those bills ought to be accompanied by an amendment 
of that law. The minority of the committee, headed by the gen- 
tleman from Louisiana [Mr. Taylor], who took his leave of us the 
other day, propose on that subject an amendment of the Consti- 
tution requiring that when fugitives are rescued by violence, the 
United States shall pay the value to their owner, and have the 
privilege of suing the county or district permitting the rescue for 
the amount. Sir, this is to perpetuate, and not to close the slav- 
ery controversy. The only effect of the adoption of such an 
amendment of the Constitution would be to make this hall every 
session, on every bill to pay for negroes rescued, the scene of fierce 
strife upon the very subject of slavery. Another objection is 
equally fatal. It brings the United States into direct collision 
with an organized political division of a State, which the Consti- 
tution of the United States was most carefully devised to avoid. 
The right of action against a county for so harsh a cause could 
scarcely be enforced by any process known to the law. Success 
would itself cause great discontent among large masses of people, 
and resistance to their execution could only be removed by armed 
force. In other words, the amendment prepared by the minority 
of the committee would plunge us here into the perpetual discus- 
sion of the Slavery Question, and would require the government 
to enforce against communities numerous, and powerful, and inno- 
cent responsibilities for acts which they have not done, but have 
only failed to prevent. The bill reported by the majority of the 
committee is very different in its purposes and in its policy. It 
assumes that the law for the rendition of fugitive slaves ought to 
be so modified as not to give cause or pretext for the fears which 
it has occasioned at the North, and then when that exciting 
cause of discontent is removed, the law can be executed. The 
danger which the JSTorthen people feel is that their own free resi- 

O 



210 THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE. 

dent colored people may, under summary process, be arrested, 
carried off, and sold into slavery. The law of 1850 provides no 
remedy for cases of that sort. We propose that where there is a 
claim of freedom, the negro shall be surrendered to the marshal 
of the United States, and carried back to the slave State from 
which he is ascertained to have come, and there shall have the 
privilege of a trial before a court of the United States in that 
State. A trial there can not be objected to by Southern gentle- 
men ; Northern gentlemen ought to be satisfied that his claim to 
freedom, brought in a formal and public manner before a judicial 
tribunal of the United States, will be decided according to its 
merit. Surely no one can hesitate between the cumbersome and 
anomalous plan of the minority, and the simple and just bill of 
the majority of the committee. 

The next subject is that of the Territories. Mr. Speaker, it is 
certainly marvelous that, having settled this very question touch- 
ing this very Territory by Mr. Clay's acts in 1850, and no inter- 
mediate law having been passed by any body excepting the law 
of 1854 repealing the Missouri Compromise, so as to allow slavery 
to exist north of the line of 36° 30', the South having boasted of 
the laws of 1850 as their triumph, and every party in the country 
having pledged itself to stand by them, it is of all things most 
strange that we are now told that this Union can not endure un- 
less those laws themselves are repealed ; and the very principle 
of the Missouri Compromise, so far as it was objected to by the 
South, that is, the exclusion of slavery beyond the line which they 
denounced as unequal, shall be not only restored, but ingrafted 
forever on the Constitution of the United States ! It was de- 
nounced and branded by Southern men all through the debate 
which resulted in its repeal as a badge of inferiority, a mark of 
inequality, a stain of dishonor to the South. And now they de- 
mand that it shall be restored, not by a temporary act of legisla- 
tion, but by the sanction of the people in the supreme law of the 
laud. A more flagrant, inexplicable, unintelligible case of capri- 
cious inconsistency is unknown to history. But, sir, the gentle- 
men who assume to speak for the South have changed their no- 
tions of equality and honor, and of course the world must change 
too. The proposal is made on the part of the minority of the 
committee that there shall be a division of territory, and that all 
the region north of 36° 30' shall be dedicated to freedom, and in 



THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE. 211 

all the region south to Cape Horn, slavery of the African race is 
" hereby recognized as existing" — existing over the whole of Mexico 
— over all the regions of Central America, skipping Brazil, I sup- 
pose, where slavery already exists, and going down to the ex- 
tremist regions of South America by virtue of our Constitution. 
Now, Mr. Speaker, the gentleman who proposed that ought' to 
know something of the history of the last few years at least, and 
if there is one thing which ought to be understood as absolutely 
impossible, it is ever to get a law through this Ilouse, or even 
through the Senate, by a simple majority, establishing slavery in 
any inch of territory where it does not already exist. Be it right 
or be it wrong, be it liberal or be it illiberal, every gentleman 
here must know that that is one of the things which are impossi- 
ble. But in what method do the gentlemen of the minority pro- 
pose to do this? By a constitutional amendment requiring two 
thirds of this House — where it could not get one third — and two 
thirds of the Senate ; and when it has gone through these impos- 
sible ordeals, it has to go before the people of the United States, 
and get, not two thirds but three fourths of the Legislatures of the 
several states. Scale the heavens, if you please, without wings ; 
pass the abyss which divides heaven from hell, but do not talk 
about a thing like this. And what in the mean time, Mr. Speaker ? 
Agitation, violence, recrimination, not merely on the question of 
the policy of slavery, but compelling the Northern people, wheth- 
er they will or not, to go into the very question of its merits, moral 
and religious, not leaving them where they are willing to leave 
you — as they have said over and over again — within the impassa- 
ble barriers of the Constitution of the United States, made tenfold 
higher and tenfold stronger by the provision of the gentleman 
from Massachusetts [Mr. Adams] — but asking the people of the 
North to declare that they have been hypocritical in their opin- 
ions that African slavery is not merely impolitic, but immoral; a 
thing which they ought not to sanction — to reverse all their judg- 
ment on that subject, and themselves ingraft in the Constitution 
a doctrine which you accuse them of hating so eternally that 
they are struggling to destroy it illegally and unconstitutionally. 
You ask them to save and protect that very thing which, for two 
years past, you have stood here and denounced them for intend- 
ing to destroy ; by exciting servile war ; by insidious appeals to 
the non-slaveholding white people of the South ; by the hands 



212 THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE. 

of such incendiaries as John Brown. In the most of these ap- 
peals, while their echo is still ringing in my ears, while I have 
before me the scenes that I witnessed last year on that side of the 
House, when men, raging and furious as the revolutionary assem- 
blies in France, hurled the epithets "traitor" and "incendiary" 
against their equals from the free states thick as arrows in a Par- 
thian battle-field, gentlemen now ask those very men, to whom 
such opinions have been imputed, to turn round and forget all, 
and, as honest men, conciliatory men, wise men, do the very thing 
which they have told you for the last eighty years they could not 
in their consciences do. 

Very different is the mode of disposing of the territory that 
has been fallen upon by the majority of the committee, anxious 
to remove the pretext for contention, and striving as far as they 
could to avoid the difficulties in the plan demanded of them, and 
that in no conciliatory tone, but with the air of dictating an ulti- 
matum ! They propose this. All the territory now held by the 
United States south of 86° 80' is the Territory of New Mexico 
extending a little north of it. In that Territory, under the law 
of 1850, which is now so fiercely assailed, the people within one 
year have themselves adopted a slave code as rigorous as any in 
existence in any of the Southern States. The law of 1850 secured 
to that people the right to admission into the Union with or with- 
out slavery, as their Constitution might provide. "With eminent 
liberality, in mere execution and not in repeal of that law, the 
gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Adams], whose position on 
the subject of slavery all the world knows, as if to put forever to 
silence imputations of any design in any portion of the Northern 
people to invade the rights of the South, comes forward now and 
proposes to pass a law creating New Mexico a state. If it see fit 
to adopt slavery, then it will be a slave state. If it see fit to for- 
bid it, then it will be a free state. In either event, it removes the 
subject of controversy. In either event, it puts it beyond the 
power of any one to touch this domestic institution by constitu- 
tional guarantees as irrepealable, as unchangeable as the minority 
demand. That would remove the controversy from Congress, 
not by a compromise, but by removing the whole subject from 
Congress and the people forever by a simple majority of this House 
and of the other House, and the signature of the President, leav- 
ing the whole subject in controversy to be decided, as Southern 



THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE. 213 

gentlemen must see it must ultimately be decided, by the Consti- 
tution of New Mexico. If I am correctly informed by the gen- 
tleman who has so honorably represented that Territory here, the 
people arc likely to require a decision themselves within a year ; 
proceedings are now pending before the Legislature for the pur- 
pose of asking their recognition. I ask, therefore, whether it is 
not wise, before we have still farther revolutionary complications 
forced upon us, to tell them at once to form their Constitution, and 
thus take away the subject of the controversy now and forever. 
With regard to the other portion of the territory, Northern gentle- 
men ask no exclusion of slavery by law or Constitution. The 
perpetualimputation is that they are for prohibition every where. 
South Carolina has elevated that to a chief place in her travesty 
of the Declaration of Independence. During, the two months 
that we have been here, no gentleman heard such a thing urged 
as a proposal to exclude slavery from the northern portion of the 
Territory. If I am rightly informed, the Senate, by a Republican 
majority, has, within the last two days, passed a bill organizing 
the western portion of Kansas as a Territory, and there is not one 
word in it on the subject of slavery, so that the proposition of the 
gentleman from Massachusetts is to place the Slavery Question 
beyond the possible reach of Congress south of 36° 30', and in 
the residue to leave it to the administration of the law. He says : 
" We all agree as to what that law is. We will not attempt to 
change it by legislation. And as 3^011 desire the southern portion 
of it set apart for your patrimony, in God's name take it, and let 
us be at peace." Any man who is not wholly blind to the great 
interests at stake would accept such an offer as that as an eternal 
adjustment, not only in spirit, but in fact, of this whole contro- 
versy. After that, no imputation of a desire on the part of the 
North to interfere with slavery ought to pass Southern lips. 

Sir, I know that these propositions will be received with a 
shrug of the shoulders, and a suggestion that they are not satis- 
factory, by gentlemen of the South. But, sir, I tell them that if 
they do not satisfy them, they will satisfy the x jeo ])le, and that 
they will find out before they are many months older. The great 
State of Virginia has told them within the last three days that 
the heart of the people of the Commonwealth still beats true to 
this Union ; and though they may for a moment be deluded, they 
can not be forced into revolutionary violence for the difference 



214 THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE. 

between the measures of the majority and the minority of the 
committee. 

If their representatives here, or at Eichmond, or in their uncon- 
stitutional Convention, called for unconstitutional purposes, shall, 
after the adoption of these proposals, venture to advise resort to 
revolution, they will speak to deaf ears and hard hearts. I do 
not envy the lot of any one who advocates an ordinance of seces- 
sion on such grounds. I think he will meet with small favor 
who, rather than create New Mexico a State, presents to the peo- 
ple of Virginia the awful alternative of tearing down the fabric 
built up by our fathers, of making war. upon their Northern 
brethren, of blotting out the great memories of the past, of strik- 
ing out their star from the galaxy of this great Confederacy, form- 
ed under the auspices of Washington, to become the small sun of 
• a secondary constellation, dependent on the caprice of greater 
powers for justice and safety. I am under no delusion about the 
meanings of the vote in Virginia. I think the failure of these 
measures will create serious disappointment, and gravely aggra- 
vate existing discontents ; but I am confident that, however poli- 
ticians may regard them, they will be hailed with delight by the 
great mass of the people of Virginia, as well as of the other central 
slave States, and will strip the enemies of the United States of all 
power for mischief. 

But, sir, there is one State I can speak for, and that is the State 
of Maryland. (Applause in the galleries.) Confident in the 
strength of this great government to protect every interest, grate- 
ful for almost a century of unalloyed blessings, she has fomented 
no agitation ; she has done no act to disturb the public peace ; 
she has rested in the consciousness that, if there be wrong, the 
Congress of the United States will remedy it ; and that none ex- 
ists which revolution would not aggravate. 

Mr. Speaker, I represent here the Fourth Congressional District 
of Maryland only ; but, though I am not elected by the State of 
Maryland, I am entitled to speak here, and I will speak what I 
Jcnow to be the sentiments of the State of Maryland. (Applause 
on the floor and in the galleries.) 

Mr. Speaker, I am here this day to speak, and I say that I do 
speak, for the people of Maryland, who are loyal to the United 
States; and that when my judgment is contested, I appeal to the 
people for its accuracy, and I am ready to maintain it before 
them. (Great applause.) 



THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE. 215 

In Maryland we are dull, and can not comprehend the right of 
secession. We do not recognize the right to make a revolution 
by a vote. We do not recognize the right of Maryland to repeal 
the Constitution of the United States ; and if any Convention 
there, called by whatever authority, under whatever auspices, un- 
dertake to inaugurate revolution in Maryland, their authority 
will be resisted and defied in arms on the soil of Maryland, in 
the name and by the authority of the Constitution of the United 
States. 

A majority have no more right than a minority. The right of 
a majority is a constitutional, not a natural right. For the de- 
struction of the Constitution they can have no right. The whole 
mass of the nation alone has the right to alter the fundamental 
law by common consent. The right of resistance to oppression 
attaches to the oppressed, whether a majority or a minority of a 
state, a country, or a nation, and success vindicates the right. 
The assumption of the revolutionary bodies to bind the people 
of a State by the formalities of a vote is as ridiculous as it is im- 
potent ; their law directing the vote is a nullity ; and the result 
expresses the will only of those who concur in it. If by the usur- 
pation they can beat. down domestic opposition, and defy the 
United States, they vindicate their right by power; if they fail, 
the}'- \)Sij the penalty of failure. We in Maryland will submit to 
no attempt of a minority or a majority to drag us from under the 
flag of the Union. The Committee of Thirty -three have carefully 
considered the proposed restrictions on the change of certain ar- 
ticles in the Constitution of the United States. 

The minority propose to prohibit by amendment the abolition 
of slavery in the forts, dock -yards, and District of Columbia, and 
of the slave-trade between the slave States ; and to make those 
prohibitions, and also the article touching the ratio of representa- 
tion and fugitives from labor, unchangeable. 

But no party from any quarter now proposes to touch them, 
and the committee thought a simple declaration of that fact more 
satisfactory and prudent than to open the agitation by asking 
three fourths of the States to agree not to do what no one pro- 
poses to do. Those topics are agitated, not at the North, but at 
the South, and merely for political effect. 

But the question of the immunity of slavery in the States is 
very different. It exists by state authority. When established, 



216 THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE. 

the Constitution guarantees it. And the impression having been 
studiously made on the minds of the people of the slaveholding 
states that the North design at some future time to destroy slav- 
ery, the majority of the committee propose to quiet forever that 
apprehension, and anew to consecrate the principle of state rights 
in internal matters by forbidding any change in the Constitution 
affecting slavery in the States. 

That guarantee, as proposed by the gentleman from Massachu- 
setts [Mr. Adams], in my judgment, is more ample and more satis- 
factory than the corresponding proposition offered by the minori- 
ty. They propose that no alteration of the Constitution shall be 
made authorizing Congress to abolish slavey. The proposition 
of the gentleman from Massachusetts is, that there shall be no 
amendment affecting the relation of persons held to labor within 
a State at all, whether directly through the Constitution, or in- 
directly through the Congress, unless by the consent of all the 
States, and upon motion of a slave State ; so that, with extreme 
astuteness, the amendment of the gentleman from Massachusetts 
guards against that which is really our greatest evil, the begin- 
ning of agitation for the purpose of varying the Constitution in 
this respect. The motion can only be made by a slave State. No 
free State can ever open the question of the repeal, or change that 
article of the Constitution. I submit, therefore, that the report of 
the majority, in that respect, is' far more satisfactory than that of 
the minority. 

The failure to surrender fugitives from justice, when the crime 
is connected with slavery, has been a topic of endless crimination. 
The report of the minority refers to the complaint. But not only 
does it prepose no remedy, but actually passes in silence the very 
important bill of the majority of the committee, effectually end- 
ing the controversy by transferring from the executive of the 
State to the judiciary of the United States the power and duty of 
making the surrender. This is a step in the right direction — re- 
suming by the United States the right to administer its own laws, 
and freeing itself from all dependence on State officers whom it 
can not control. 

There are, Mr. Speaker, other complaints mentioned by the mi- 
nority of the committee for which they have proposed no reme- 
dy. We have seen what remedies they propose. And they think 
the adoption of their propositions ought to give peace and quiet 



THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE. 217 

to the country. Yet there are other topics treated in their report 
quite as significant as those ; other grounds of discontent and ap- 
prehension for which the minority have proposed no remedy, 
against which they ask no guarantee. The causes of complaint 
left without redress are vastly more important than those cover- 
ed by the enactments proposed. They are wholly unaffected by 
them ; yet the minority of the committee, while devoting whole 
pages to the development of dangers and outrages consummated 
or apprehended, leave them without any suggestion for redress 
or protection. They think " the object aimed at can be accom- 
plished by the adoption of the series of amendments to the Con- 
stitution rejected by the committee, and now reported to the 
House" — that "they afford such a basis of an adjustment as they 
would all cheerfully accept, with a strong conviction that, if the 
proposed amendments were adopted by the Northern States, har- 
mony and peace would be restored to our jDeople." 

Sir, nothing in legislative history is more instructive than these 
declarations, compared with the narrative of wrongs and appre- 
hensions which precede them, and the remedies which I have 
enumerated. 

They have complained that the right of transit is refused, yet 
there is no proposal that it be granted. 

The gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Taylor] heads the list of 
wrongs in his report with the refusal to protect slaves upon the 
ocean and in foreign countries. I presume, to the extent of in- 
ternational law, they are now so protected ; but whether they are 
or not, that was not apparently considered of sufficient importance 
to justify any recommendation on the subject, and the complaint 
merely swells the list of irritative topics. 

The minority bitterly complain of the Northern hostility to 
slavery, the circulation of incendiary pamphlets, the perpetual ap- 
peal through the pulpit and the press, the never-ceasing activity 
of the abolition societies, and the doctrine of the irrepressible con- 
flict so much invoked during the last few years for the purpose 
and with the effect of heating the public mind. If these com- 
plaints be true — if they are the causes of the present discontent — 
if they have shaken the security of Southern society, then how 
can peace and harmony be restored by measures which have no 
relation to the cause of discontent and apprehension ? If they 
have caused the excitement which threatens the integrity of the 



213 THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE. 

government, how is it that gentlemen, after enumerating the griev- 
ance, propose to rest content without redress ? No guarantee of 
slavery will silence agitation, or the pulpit or the press, or incen- 
diary publications, or incitements to revolt, or the organized in- 
vasion of States. Yet so important is this topic considered, that 
one of the gentlemen who signed the minority report, in default 
of.adequate proof, argued the ineradicable hostility of the North 
to slavery, and their resolution to exterminate it in spite of every 
constitutional guarantee — even those which would " restore peace 
and harmony to our people" — because their party platforms op- 
posed it, and they were honorable men, and therefore must, in the 
face of their disclaimers and denials, and of the very declarations 
of the platform itself, consistently go on and — despite the Con- 
stitution and contrary to its provisions — attempt to break up the 
relation of master and slave in the slave States. 

Mr. Speaker, I suppose that if, as the gentleman who made that 
argument said, they are honorable men, then of course their word 
is to be taken rather than the inference from a doubtful political 
platform. Political platforms are entitled to small respect from 
any quarter. They are, sir, nothing but sails spread to catch the 
popular breeze. It depends upon the pilot whether the ship shall 
sail before the wind, or close-hauled and in a different direction. 
Least of all does it become gentlemen who first agreed that a Ter- 
ritory should be allowed to regulate its own institutions in its 
own way, and then considered the forcing of the Lecompton Con- 
stitution on the people against their will a fair execution of that 
policj r , to argue that any very rigid consistency between the plat- 
form and the policy of a party is to be expected in the course of 
political strife; yet to such shifts are gentlemen driven in their 
efforts to show — in spite of the resolutions of the majority of the 
Committee of Thirty-three and their unanimous disavowal — that 
the Northern people do contemplate disturbing slavery in the 
States. The importance of retaining that impression is not over- 
estimated ; for if it be yielded, the revolutionists will have few 
followers, and peace and harmony will be restored to our people 
in spite of every effort to disturb them. 

[The following, owing to interruptions, was not delivered in the House of Rep- 
scntatives :] 

A more marvelous contrast awaits us. 

The minority report with great elaboration depicts the rise of 



THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF TIIIRTY-TIIREE. 219 

a purely sectional party, determined to rule the Southern States 
by the Northern votes, united by hostility to slavery alone ; de- 
clared that its triumph reduces the people of the South from citi- 
zens to subjects; and that by the late election the work of section- 
alism was completed, to the apprehension of the people of the 
South ; and if that apprehension be not speedily removed, the days 
of the Eepublic are numbered. They find countenance for this 
view in the South Carolina and Alabama ordinances. Eead the 
remarkable recital of the Alabama ordinance : 

"Whereas, the election of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin to the 
offices of President and Vice-President of the United States by a sectional party 
avowedly hostile to the domestic institutions and peace and security of the people 
of the State of Alabama, following upon the heels of many and dangerous infrac- 
tions of the Constitution of the United States by many of the States and people of the 
Northern section, is a political wrong of so insulting and menacing a character as 
to justify the people of the State of Alabama in the adoption of prompt and decided 
measures for their future peace and security." 

The revolutionists of Alabama for those causes tear themselves 
away from the government ; the minority of the committee reiter- 
ate the complaint, and leave it unredressed. They are silent on 
the remedy for the great grievance — the accomplished fact of sec- 
tional domination — the inauguration of a party bent on reducing 
the people of the South from citizens to subjects — that great po- 
litical wrong of so " insulting and menacing a character," the 
election of a President " by a sectional party avowedly hostile to 
the domestic institutions, peace, and security of the people" of the 
South. They leave it unredressed — unless a right to expand 
into new territory be a compensation for the right of self-govern- 
ment, or absolute security for existing rights touching slavery be 
an indemnity for the loss of " a voice in the management of the 
national affairs, in which they have a common interest with their 
Northern brethren." 

Sir, that is impossible. "We know that the Southern people 
and those gentlemen who signed the report count the right of 
self-government infinitely above all rights of property and all 
personal security. If they really feared such a domination, they 
would spurn accommodation on any terms. 

Sir, the majority must rule. Particular interests will aggregate 
in particular localities, and parties will group themselves around 
interests ; the East will be manufacturing, the West agricultural, 



220 TIIE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE. 

New York commercial, and Pennsylvania interested in iron and 
coal ; Alabama will grow cotton, and Louisiana sugar ; Virginia 
will grow tobacco, wheat, and corn; but a coalition of such, inter- 
ests to oppress others is without example in our history, and if ef- 
fected, could be only temporary. Such a coalition of the free 
States is absolutely absurd. The South has always been able by 
4ts one common interest to impose on the divided North its policy 
and views ; the North has no bond of Union, no one pervading 
and common interest so controlling as tp concentrate its power 
and dictate its policy. It unites only in the negative interests of 
repelling the intrusion of slavery on its borders. It never united 
for that defensive purpose till the South united to invade the do- 
main secured to it by the Missouri Compromise. This defensive 
and reluctant union, only partially effected, is the pretext for these 
exaggerated and sombre pictures of political subjection. Web- 
ster, failing to unite them in defense of their interests, exclaimed, 
" There is no North." Southern politicians have created a North. 
Let us trace the process and draw the moral. 

The laws of 1850 calmed and closed the slavery agitation ; and 
President Pierce, elected by the almost unanimous voice of the 
States, did not mention slavery in his first two messages. In 1854, 
the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, at the instance of the 
South, reopened the agitation. 

Northern men, deserted by Southern Whigs, were left to unite 
for self-defense. 

The invasion of Kansas in 1855 and 1856 from Missouri ; the 
making a Legislature and laws for that Territory by the invaders 
still farther united the Northern people. The election of 1856 
measured its extent. 

The election of Mr. Buchanan and his opening policy in Kan- 
sas soothed the irritation, and was rapidly demoralizing the new 
party, when the pro-slavery party in Kansas perpetrated, and the 
President and the South accepted the Lecompton fraud, and again 
united the North more resolutely in resistance to that invasion of 
the rights of self-government. 

The South for the first time foiled to dictate terms, and the peo- 
ple vindicated by their votes the refusal of the Constitution. 

Ere this result was attained, the opinions of certain judges of 
the Supreme Court scattered doubts over the law of slavery in 
the Territories; the South, while repudiating other decisions, in- 



THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE. 221 

stantly made these opinions the criterion of faithfulness to the 
Constitution, while the North was agitated by this new sanction 
of the extremest pretensions of their opponents. 

The South did not rest satisfied with their judicial triumph. 

Immediately the claim was pressed for protection by Congress 
to slavery, declared by the Supreme Court, they said, to exist in 
all the Territories. 

This completed the Union of the free States in one great de- 
fensive league, and the result was registered in November. That 
result is now, itself, become the starting-point of new agitation — 
the demand of new rights and new guarantees. The claim to ac- 
cess to the Territories was followed by the claim to congressional 
protection, and that is now followed by the hitherto unheard-of 
claim to a constitutional amendment establishing slavery, not 
merely in territory now held, but in all hereafter held from the 
line of 86° 30' to Cape Horn, while the debate foreshadows in the 
distance the claim of the right of transit and the placing of prop- 
erty in slaves in all respects on the footing of other property — the 
topics of future agitation. How long the prohibition of the im- 
portation of slaves will be exemplified from the doctrine of equal- 
ity it needs no prophet to tell. 

In the face of this recital, let the imputation of autocratic and 
tyrannical aspirations cease to be cast on the people of the free 
States; let the Southern people dismiss their fears, return to their 
friendly confidence in their fellow-citizens of the North, and ac- 
cept as pledges of returning peace the salutary amendments of the 
law and the Constitution offered as the first fruits of reconcilia- 
tion. 



ADDRESS TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE 
' ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION, 
OCTOBER 16, 1861. 



■> 



Immediately upon the election of Mr. Lincoln, and on the news of the 
first movement toward rebellion in South Carolina, efforts were made by 
those parties in Maryland who approved of or sympathized with those 
movements to induce Governor Hicks to call an extraordinary session 
of the General Assembly. As he knew the views and wishes of very 
many of such parties, and there was an intention expressed, by even the 
more moderate of them, of associating this state in any action which 
might be taken by the Commonwealth of Virginia, and as he felt con- 
vinced, from his own knowledge and observation, as well as from the nu- 
merous counter-memorials (against such call), that the great majority of 
the people of the state were opposed to such a session at that time, he 
steadily refused to yield. He also declined to take any part in any joint 
action, conference, or league with the States of Mississippi and Alabama, 
whose commissioners visited Annapolis to confer with him. When it 
was found the governor was not likely to yield to these, a " State Con- 
ference Convention" was called and held, by parties in favor of such as- 
sembling of the Legislature, on the 18th of February, in Baltimore. 
This Convention issued an address to the people of the state, declaring 
it to be the duty of Maryland, if conciliation should fail, to follow such 
course as might be adopted by Virginia. Some members of this Con- 
vention reassembled on the 12th of March, and, after reiterating their 
resolutions of the 18th of February, appointed a committee of six to visit 
and confer with the Virginia Convention. 

Amid increasing excitement throughout the countiy, the rebel batter- 
ies erected in Charleston Harbor opened their fire against the United 
States garrison in Fort Sumter on the 12th of April. 

On the news of that disgrace the North and West arose. The Presi- 
dent issued (April 15 th) his call for seventy-five thousand volunteers, 
and called the Congress of the United States for the 4th of July. 

On the same day Mr. Davis announced that he " would be a candidate 
for the Thirty-seventh Congress, on the basis of an unconditional support 
of the Union and the government ; but that if his fellow-citizens of like 
views should declare in favor of any other candidate on that basis, it was 
not his intention to embarrass them." 



ADDRESS TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE, ETC. 223 

A Union mass meeting had been called in Baltimore for the 22d of 
April, when, on the 19th, the mob, incited by some of the secessionists, 
attacked the troops from Massachusetts (Sixth Regiment) proceeding to 
Washington in response to the President's call. The track over which 
the cars containing those troops were to pass was torn up or obstructed, 
and an assault was made on them with stones and discharges of lire-arms 
as they attempted to march to the Washington Station. Several per- 
sons and some of the soldiers were killed, and a number of these who 
failed to get through to the train for Washington retreated toward Phil- 
adelphia. The wildest excitement prevailed in the city, and an attempt 
was made to organize an armed opposition to the passage through Bal- 
timore of United States troops. 

In the afternoon the mob and its leaders reigned supreme, and on that 
night the bridges on the railway leading to Harrisburg and Philadelphia 
were burned by order of the parties who had assumed control in Balti- 
more. The telegraph wires were cut, and all communication of the gov- 
ernment at Washington with the North was intercepted. The Board of 
Police Commissioners laid restrictions on the commerce of the port, for- 
bade the display of flags of any description, distributed arms to volun- 
teers, and appointed a commanding general. It was the evident determ- 
ination of the secessionists and their friends to prevent the passage of 
United States troops to Washington through Baltimore. Secession flags 
were displayed on the 18th on Federal Hill, and on the 20th at the 
Southern head-quarters on Fayette Street ; and it had previously been 
hoisted on a merchant-vessel at the Point. The governor returned to 
Annapolis on the 20th, and, yielding at last to clamor and threats, pro- 
tested, on the 21st, against the landing there of "Northern troops" 
(meaning the United States troops who had come down the bay from 
Perryville, opposite Havre de Grace), gravely proposed to the President 
to refer all matters then in dispute to the arbitrament of the British min- 
ister, and finally, next day, issued his call for the General Assembly, 
which was to meet on the 26th at Frederick. 

An election of delegates in Baltimore was held on the 24th, while the 
city was still under the effects of the mob of the 19th, was yet without 
communication with the seat of government, or with the North and West, 
and yet under the control of the military authorities appointed by the 
Police Commissioners. At this election 9249 votes were cast, all for the 
only set of candidates named. As soon as this result was known affairs 
began rapidly to mend ; and on the 5th and 13th of May, when the Unit- 
ed States troops occupied the heights at the Relay, on the Washington 
Railway, and on Federal Hill, it was seen that the minority was not 
to determine the fate of Maryland. 

On the 17th of May Mr. Davis was nominated for Congress, his com- 
petitor being the Hon. Henry May, who accepted an independent nomi- 



224 ADDRESS TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE 

nation as a friend of the Union, in favor of conciliation, compromise, ami 
settlement, and entirely opposed to the Republican party. Mr. Davis 
during the canvass openly declared himself in favor of coercion, and the 
maintenance of the federal authority by force, if necessary, lie boldly 
avowed that he had voted against the proposed " Crittenden" Compro- 
mise (which was undoubtedly the preference of the people of Maryland), 
because he thought it impracticable, and imposed terms to which the 
free states ought not to be asked to, and could not submit. 

The election took place on the 13th of June, and Mr. May was elected 
(8885) over Mr. Davis ((1287) by a majority of 2048. 

During the summer of 1801 the country suffered the humiliations of 
Bethel, Manassas, and Ball's Bluff. Then the administration began to 
perceive the necessity of organization, and of an army that should be of 
better material than undrilled recruits and parade militiamen. General 
M'Clellan was appointed to the command in chief, ami the country be- 
gan to awake to the reality — to a sense of the resources, the valor, and 
determination oi' the Southern States. These, now completely united 
among themselves, ana encouraged by the failure of the first federal ef- 
forts against them, firmly believed they could obtain, and resolutely car- 
ried on the war for their independence. 

Mr. Davis was invited in October, by a large number of the principal 
citizens, merchants, mechanics, and business men, to address them on the 
condition of affairs. He complied, and spoke on the lGth as follows: 

Mr. President and Fellow-citizens of the United States 
(applause), — Time and events, the great instructors, have dispelled 
many a delusion, stripped off many a mask, and reduced to cer- 
tainty many things about which men some months ago might 
have ventured to doubt. "Who now talks of reconstruction as 
the purpose of secession? "Who now talks of peaceful secession? 
Who now dreams of secession as a constitutional right to be de- 
termined at the ballot-box and to be acquiesced in, now that 
invading armies are trampling down the soil of Kentucky, and 
marching through and through the territory of Missouri, in spite 
of the repeatedly expressed will of their people? The mask of 
hypocrisy has been stripped from those pretenses. 

There have been expectations, likewise, disappointed. There 
were those who, when they raised the standard of rebellion against 
the government of the United States, fondly supposed that cotton 
was king. (Laughter.) They dreamed that his upstart majesty 
would bring to their knees Great Britain and France, incapable 
oi' controlling their laboring population without that aliment of 



ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION. 225 

their industry. They dreamed that if a blockade should inter- 
pose an obstruction to the free exit of cotton, English and French 
fleets would sweep the ships of the Union from before the South- 
ern ports; that if armies of invasion should venture to touch 
"the sacred soil" of the cotton-field, that imperative necessity 
would require that England and France should retaliate by block- 
ading Boston and New York, and that if these gentle measures 
were not sufficient, their armed intervention here would be re- 
quired to secure them peace at home. Whether the six months 
during which this contest has progressed have been sufficient yet 
to remove these delusions from the minds of those who fondly re- 
posed in them as a source of strength, you now can judge. Nay, 
those who led in that rebellion misled their deluded fellow-citizens 
into supposing that it was not an organized resistance to tin; gov- 
ernment in only one portion of the Union, but that disintegration 
had wrought its work from one end to the other of the republic, 
and that whenever there should be any attempt on the part of the 
government to strike a blow for the maintenance of its integrity, 
it would not be the rebellious States of the South alone that would 
have to meet the brunt of the contest, but that "the Northern 
myrmidons of Abraham Lincoln" (laughter), his "hireling men" 
sent to trample down the South, would be met, arrested, and over- 
thrown by the faithful Democrats of the North (laughter), sub- 
servient for a long generation to Southern dictation, as they fondly 
supposed their allies, not merely in the pursuit of political power 
by the ballot-box, but also in arms of rebellion, having no purpose 
but to elevate some man to power, who might share tin; plunder 
with them, and ready to imbrue their hands in their neighbor's 
blood rather than allow insurrection to be suppressed by military 
power. (Applause.) It is probable that, however any other de- 
lusion may still cling around their vision, that one, at least, has 
faded away. 

And then, fellow-citizens, events have taught us something 
more. Men have waked from the dream of that millennium of a 
Southern republic peaceful in guise, merciful in disposition, rest- 
ing upon the unconstrained will of its people, carrying out an in- 
dustrial theory amid its patriarchal institutions, coercing nobody, 
doing violence to nobody, peacefully pursuing its commercial and 
industrial interests ! They who so dreamed and so spoke, and felt 

P 



226 ADDRESS TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE 

a soft inclination toward "our Southern brethren," have had some 
rather rude instruction upon that topic. (Laughter.) 

They have inaugurated instead an era of confiscations, proscrip- 
tions, and exiles. Read their acts of greedy confiscation, their laws 
of proscription by the thousand. Behold the flying exiles from 
the unfriendly soil of Virginia, Tennessee, and Missouri. Andrew 
Johnson an exile from Tennessee! (Applause.) Emerson Eth- 
eridge (great applause) dare not go home for fear of arrest, prose- 
cution, and death by the hangman, if the swifter and more con- 
genial assassin leave him to their mercy. Thomas A. R Nelson 
seized on his transit to the capital of the United States, incarcer- 
ated, and compelled by threats to his life to forego the allegiance 
to his native land. John S. Carlisle (great applause) pursued by 
a writ for his arrest because he would not be a traitor. And the 
partisans in Maryland of the men who do these things make our 
streets hideous with their howl about " oppression," and invoke 
all the principles of the Constitution that their allies have spent 
now nearly a year in making a dead letter, to secure their immu- 
nity here and convert this heaven into their hell. (Applause.) 

Fellow-citizens, these events have worked another and a re- 
markable change here. They have disposed of nearly the whole 
of that wretched class of middle-men ; men who are secessionists 
with Union proclivities (laughter), or Unionists with secession pro- 
clivities (laughter) ; men who are for the Union and against coer- 
cion (laughter) ; who are opposed to the dissolution of the Union 
and equally opposed to having it maintained ; who think the gov- 
ernment ought to assert its authority if men will submit to it, but 
if not, that it ought to submit to them ; men who think that rulers 
do bear the sword in vain ; men who confess with a sigh their al- 
legiance to the government, but that their hearts are with the 
South — the men of compromise, the men of concessions, the men 
of " Southern" feelings, the men of " Southern" proclivities, and 
sympathies, and inclinations. All that class of men who concealed 
their treasonable purposes under the flimsy disguises that recent- 
ly deluded our people no longer deceive any one. The enemy is 
at the door, and the people of Maryland know that they who are 
not their friends are their enemies ("That's so." Applause); 
that they who are not upon the side of the government are against 
it ("That's so"); that they who are not for repelling the invader 
mean to invite him here ; that they who do not wish the rebellion 



ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION. 227 

stamped out in Virginia mean that it shall cross the Potomac into 
Maryland ; they who do not wish M'Clellan to winter in New 
Orleans want Jefferson Davis to winter in Baltimore. They have 
known all along, and we know now, even the most doubting of 
us, as well as they know, who are our enemies and who are our 
friends ; and if we have treated some of our enemies to their de- 
serts, let not those who walk at large and insult the mercy of the 
government suppose that there is any impassable barrier between 
them and the companionship of their friends. (Great applause.) 
They have no right to complain. In the face of the mercy of the 
government which they perpetually abuse, they insolently meet 
patient Union men upon the corners of the streets, in their count- 
ing-rooms, and in the parlor, and on the Merchants' Exchange, 
and wherever men " most do congregate ;" and while they writhe 
under the blow that has stricken them down here and taken from 
them the fruits of their treason before they could fully enjoy 
them, their only comfort is to appeal to the future, to promise ret- 
ribution, to intimate that assassination may cut short those who 
treat them as traitors ; that if ever they get the upper hand the 
lamp-post will be graced by individuals that they name ; that they 
will not be as insanely merciful as the government of the United 
States is; and these things while they venture to impeach the 
government for harsh and oppressive measures ! 

Gentlemen, we have great patience. With the liberty of every 
one of these individuals in the grasp of the government if it 
choose to close the hand upon them — with their lives at our 
mercy if we only choose to invoke their precedent and set loose 
the mob that they organized upon the 19th of April — with the 
example of their avowed confederates, who have exiled our friends, 
confiscated their property, outraged and scourged our flying sis- 
ters — with these provocations, these men have so little of prudence 
or such profound conviction that loyal men differ from traitors in 
that they execute the law in mercy and forbearing kindness — 
these men venture to tell us that our time will come when they 
get the uppermost. I doubt not, gentlemen ; but when! (Laugh- 
ter.) When ? " Two weeks" has been the period of expectation 
of the prophets of the Southern millennium for the last six months 
(great laughter), and still time drags slowly on to the movable 
feast of the secession.- Two weeks is marked for the crossing of 
the Potomac from day to day, and still the water rolls on unpol- 



228 ADDRESS TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE 

luted by a traitor's foot. (Applause.) Nay, it is even said that 
gentlemen traitors, of delicate breeding and aristocratic preten- 
sions, whose patriotism always assumes the form of a supper 
(laughter), have already spoiled one through the watches of one 
long wearisome night in the vain expectation that the lips of the 
deliverer might taste their wine. (Laughter.) Will these proph- 
ets tell us when ? 

Fellow-citizens, the time for doubting men has gone ; even the 
time for "peace" men has gone. (Laughter.) They have in- 
voked every thing else, and now they can scarcely find advocates 
to invoke peace. "Blessed peace" goes begging in the midst of 
this warlike state. "Blessed peace" can find no advocates now 
that her advocates are incarcerated. " Blessed peace" is no argu- 
ment to urge now in the presence of embattled hosts. And why ? 
Not because there are not people who want peace ; peace, accom- 
panied even with the triumph of the traitors ; peace at the ex- 
pense of the integrity of the government ; peace at the cost of 
every interest of the State of Maryland ; peace, though it soil our 
national escutcheon with degradation and defeat. There are men 
who will crawl in the dirt still for peace; but there is nobody now 
who can be deluded into believing that peace means any thing 
but humiliation, disgrace, degradation, national dissolution, the 
end of the republic, the beginning of the scorn and contempt of 
the world. (Great applause.) Ye men of Maryland who will 
crawl to the altar of peace, crawl there ; but ye men of Maryland 
who remember that your forefathers thought seven years of war 
better than peace with submission and degradation, I appeal to 
you here this night to revive the recollection of those great days, 
and act upon their inspiration. (Great applause.) 

And Maryland, too, is she disloyal ? (No, no.) There are those 
who say so. There are those who say so in our State ; there are 
those who say so abroad; there are those in power who believe 
it, and there are those who are not in power, but who skulk about 
in the darkness of the alleys of this great city, and carry whisper- 
ing to the ear of power their slanders on their fellow-citizens, or 
spread them broadcast by the press all over the country, until 
Maryland stands almost in as ill repute as if she had lifted her 
hand in arms against the government that she adores and will 
maintain ; and because of one deplorable and humiliating event, 
the result of weakness in some of our rulers and of treachery in 



ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION. 229 

others, there are those in one great region of this country who 
treat the State of Maryland as the whole South lately treated the 
whole North. The time was when one fanatic, inflamed by ha- 
tred, started out to make war upon the State of Virginia and set 
its negroes free, with twenty men at his back. (Laughter.) He 
was seized and hung. All the South with one acclaim laid that 
dastardly and crazy deed at the door of every man throughout the 
great regions of the civilized and Christian North ;• and there was 
no voice from the South in the House of Representatives but one, 
and that one ventured it at the peril of his political existence, to 
defend the North from that imputation. (Applause.) And now 
the city in which he lives has yet to find one defender in all the 
region of that North from complicity with the equally dastardly 
crime of the 19th of April. (Applause.) Great masses of men, 
when their passions are aroused, and when the judgment is asleep, 
when great events are transpiring, forget the rules of justice and 
of discrimination, and one portion of the country is just as liberal 
and just as illiberal as the other under analogous circumstances. 
I have defended my fellow-citizens of the North. I can venture 
now to defend my fellow-citizens of Maryland, and demand to be 
heard elsewhere than here. (Applause.) 

Is Maryland, then, disloyal? Has she ever, for a moment, hes- 
itated even ? It is more than can be said for any other State south 
of Mason and Dixon's line but Delaware. Have the people of 
Maryland ever hesitated as to the side they should take in this 
great struggle? ("No, no.") Did she hesitate when the commis- 
sioners from Alabama and from Mississippi sought to associate her 
to the plotting of their treason ? Did she hesitate when her gov- 
ernor resolutely, for three decisive months, refused to convene her 
traitorous .Legislature (applause), lest they might plunge her into 
the vortex of rebellion ? Did she ever hesitate when cunning pol- 
iticians pestered him with their importunities, when committees 
swarmed from every disloyal quarter of the State, when men of 
the first position sought him and attempted to browbeat him in 
his mansion? Did she swerve when they, failing to compel him 
to call the Legislature, attempted the vain formality of a mock 
vote throughout the State to call a sovereign Convention by the 
spontaneous voice of the traitors of Maryland ? Did they hesitate 
when in almost every county, even in those counties which were 
strongly secession, at the election for that Convention, the disloyal 



230 ADDRESS TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE 

candidates were either defeated or got votes so insignificant as to 
create nothing but disgust and laughter throughout the State? 
Did they hesitate when that wretched remnant of a Convention 
met here, amid the jeers and the scoffs of the people of Baltimore, 
at the Maryland Institute — to do nothing and go home? What was 
it that enabled the governor .to resist the pressing applications for 
frhe convocation of the Legislature ? Are we to suppose that he 
had courage and resolution to face down and overbear the will of 
the great majority of the people of Maryland ? Or was it not be- 
cause, knowing the people who had elected him, their temper and 
their purposes, he felt that, however severe the pressure might be 
on him, where one person sought the meeting of the Legislature, 
there were thousands who stood by him in his refusal to convoke 
them ? (Applause.) 

Gentlemen, if the country will only go back to that critical pe- 
riod, the period of the opening of the electoral votes in the House 
of Representatives in February, and the inauguration of the Presi- 
dent on the 4th of March, they who know most about that period 
will know best that the destiny of the capital of the United States 
lay in the hollow of the hand of Maryland ? And had Maryland 
been then as people now presumptuously assert that she is, Abra- 
ham Lincoln might have taken the oath before a magistrate in the 
corner of some magistrate's office in Pennsylvania, but he would 
not have been then inaugurated where his predecessors were in- 
augurated, in the august presence of the Capitol of the country. 
I pray gentlemen to reflect, when they think of subsequent events, 
that if disloyalty had lain as a cankering worm at the heart of 
Maryland, then was her time. She could have made something 
by being false then. She could have presented herself before her 
Southern sisters dowering them with the capital of the country ; 
and there was no power that could have prevented that gift, how- 
ever the returning tide of events might have shown it to be as un- 
wise as it was treacherous. 

Then, fellow-citizens, what next? The bombardment of Fort 
Sumter, the uprising of the North, the call for troops which Ma- 
rylanders stood ready to respond to (applause), when their ardor 
was damped by the proclamation of the governor, and the disloyal 
mayor of Baltimore — not the disloyal governor, but the governor 
and the disloyal mayor of Baltimore ("that is it") — informing the 
people that no troops should be sent out of the State of Maryland 



ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION. 231 

for any other purpose than the defense of the capital. That was 
the equivalent of telling the traitors of Maryland that the loyal 
men of Maryland were afraid to do their duty, and they acted 
upon it instantly. That proclamation appeared upon the 18th of 
April, and on the very evening of that day was held the meeting 
at which Parkin Scott, and Mr. Carr, and Mr. Burns, and other men 
of that stamp, prepared the hearts of the mob for the 19th of April. 
(" True.") And then, gentlemen, came that eternal stain upon the 
memory of those engaged in it — not a stain upon the memory of 
Baltimore — not a stain upon the memory of her loyal governor — 
not a stain upon the. memory of her disarmed loyal citizens — a 
stain upon those who vilely and perfidiously perverted the trust 
given to them by the people of Maryland for the preservation of 
the peace of this city into an instrument of revolution, treacher- 
ously begun, treacherously carried on, until it fell before the scorn 
and wrath of the people of Maryland. 

Then, gentlemen, the governor, with the commissions already 
signed lying upon his table, with the officers standing around him 
waiting to receive their commissions — the governor, suddenly 
smitten by an inexplicable terror, forgetting that the majority of 
the people of Baltimore were loyal and were around him, and, if 
summoned, could support and would support him ; forgetting that 
on Federal Hill the very night before, even after his damaging 
proclamation of the 3-8th, when some traitors attempted to raise a 
secession flag there, the loyal working-men pulled it clown and 
tore it to tatters (great applause) ; forgetting that these men were 
within five minutes' walk of where he sat, and that their breasts 
were such a protection as all the secessionists of Baltimore could 
not have marched over to assail him ; forgetting that ttie voice of 
authority can paratyze in its incipient stages civil outbreak ; for- 
getting the great example of which history gives us so many — 
more especially forgetting the great example of Cardinal Riche- 
lieu, when the enemy was almost at the gates of Paris, and the 
populace of Paris thought it was there through his neglect and 
were calling for his blood, the old cardinal, unarmed and without 
guards, went to the Hotel cle Ville in the midst of the excited and 
infuriated multitude, and besought them to come to his aid and 
not to his overthrow, and every rebellious arm sank before his 
patriotic appeal — forgetting great examples like these, the govern- 
or, failing to rise to the height of the occasion, went to the Hotel 



232 ADDRESS TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE 

tie Ville, and threw himself into the arms of his enemies, and be- 
came from that time but their instrument, graced by his presence 
their disloyal and degrading meeting, stood in their midst while 
they uttered disloyal sentiments, uttered no word of disapproba- 
tion' when they, the mayor at their head, falsified events that had 
occurred under their own eyes that day, and allowed them to treat 
as -an assault on the people of Baltimore the act of self-defense of 
our fellow-citizens of Massachusetts against the traitorous assassins 
that assailed them without warning as they marched peacefully on 
their way for the defense of the Capitol.' Then came the calling- 
out of the military, two thirds of them secessionists, under officers 
many of whom were known then to be traitors, and who have 
since signalized their treachery by leaving Maryland, in pursuit 
of military service in the Confederate States. Then it was that 
here in Baltimore even strong men's hearts failed them for fear. 
Then it was that we saw the Chief of Police, and the Commission- 
ers of Police, and Trimble, the "general commanding" (derisive 
laughter), and his aids innumerable, and his adjutant general 
(continued laughter), disporting themselves through the streets in 
gaudy colors, arraying armed men in Monument Square, first their 
trained volunteers, and then the rabble and the mob not to do 
their behests, and then arresting the commerce of the port, and 
then seizing upon the military stores of the United States, and 
then forbidding the display of the national flag, and then arresting 
people for spies, cutting off the transit of troops to the Capitol by 
breaking up the railway communications, arming steamers to ply 
in the port to arrest the free transit of Maryland commerce — all 
these things done by the Chief of Police and the members of the police 
of Baltimore and the organized mob — the loyal men informed that 
their lives were not safe — men insolently warned to leave the city 
if they would be safe — men thinking that it was " too good news 
to be true" that the Virginians were coming down to aid us; com- 
munication opened, formal embassies sent up to Harper's Ferry 
to invite John Letcher's 6000 men to come clown and help the 
Marylanders to be free (laughter), and empty cars mysteriously 
gliding, in spite of the President, for a whole day toward Harper's 
Ferry — a peace-offering to our Southern brethren ("that's so") 
which might prevent their destroying the road and could not em- 
barrass their march to Baltimore — the correspondence opened with 
John Letcher for muskets to be put into the hands of our "loyal 



ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION. 233 

citizens" — quarreling between General Stcuart and certain mem- 
bers of the Police Board and Mr. Trimble for the possession of 
the precious deposit of 2000 arms sent down here from Harper's 
Ferry to keep the peace — Bradley Johnson, with an " invincible 
legion" of thirty men, rushing to defend Baltimore against "the 
Northern hordes" (laughter) — Marshal Kane making the mount- 
ains and the valleys of Virginia and Maryland hideous with his 
cry for help, which did not come (great laughter) — the Vansville 
Kangers scattered all along the way, forty men full (renewed 
laughter), from Washington to Baltimore, to guard the road — 
"loyal men" from Harford County, in equally overwhelming 
masses, rushing in to defend Baltimore against "Lincoln's hire- 
lings" (laughter) — all these things are represented by the intelli- 
gent Northern press as the doings of i\\o people of Maryland ! 

And on Wednesday an election was called (great laughter), and 
it was supposed that the unanimous voice of "an oppressed peo- 
ple" would signalize this day of their deliverance. 

-x- -x- -:<- * -x- -x- -x- 

LTad they not taken every possible pains to " obliterate all past 
differences" by the organizing of 3000 sharp bayonets to argue 
with the refractory? Was there not, therefore, every reason to 
suppose that there would be entire unanimity; naj', that these 
people, trodden down to the earth, trembling before the advent 
of " fresh hordes," wishing to place the mild and peaceful gov- 
ernment of Jefferson Davis between their threatened bosoms and 
the Northern onslaught, would rush as one man to elect these 
gentlemen, the symbols of Southern sympathy, as their protectors 
in the day of their distress? The morning of election came, and 
one third of the people of Baltimore, under the influence of pres- 
sure, and persuasion, and delusion, and a little coercion (laughter), 

signified at an illegal election that they thought and his 

colleagues fit associates for the rest of the majority of the LTouse 
of Delegates. (Laughter.) 

On Thursday morning, when men woke and walked down the 
streets, they found that a revolution had occurred, although they 
did not know it. Gone was the elastic step, gone was the uplifted 
eye of insolence, gone was the jeering scoff with which Secession- 
ist met Union man, gone was the half menace with which loyal 
men were met, gone was the nod of fate that told them that their 
hour was coming. They fell by their victory ; they died of their 



234 ADDRESS TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE 

vote ; the silence of two thirds of Baltimore stripped the revolu- 
tionists of their power, and consigned them to ignominy. (Ap- 
plause.) Half the votes of a people do not make a revolution. 
One third may make a rebellion, but two thirds on the spot can 
put it down ; and they felt it. (" That's so.") Gradually troops 
disappeared from Monument Square; gradually the arms were 
placed in their armories ; gradually there were fewer and fewer 
"orders from head-quarters," " Trimble commanding" (laughter); 
gradually the steam-tug which constituted the navy of the incipi- 
ent republic (laughter) ceased to send forth its black smoke, and 
vessels could venture to leave Baltimore without having a pop- 
gun fired at them (laughter); and even the Union men that had 
been frightened awoke to the consciousness that where they 
thought they were slaves they were masters, and from that day 
to this there has been nothing in Baltimore to make any man 
afraid, except one who has violated the laws of the land. 

B J was seen almost immediately after that election, 

having accomplished the purpose of his visit, to return to Fred- 
erick; and on the 9th of May, "the defenders of Maryland," "the 
defenders of Baltimore," the candidates for immortality in the 
coming revolution, the men who were to fill the places in the 
niche of history corresponding to those filled by Williams and 
Smallwood of the Revolution — those men had tramped way-worn 
and weary to Frederick, and in that loyal town were guarded by 
the police through the town on their way to Dixie's land, without 

airy music accompanying. (Laughter.) And B J , with 

his thirty heroes, not one fallen in conflict with the " Northern 
invaders," joined them and marched to defend Harper's Ferry ! 

Now, upon the simple statement of that series of facts, is there 
an}'' man who needs any thing else to be told him to convince 
him that the outbreak of April was a mob and not a revolution ; 
that it received importance from the fact that the traitorous au- 
thorities attempted to use it for traitorous purposes ; and without 
the firing of a gun, without the approach of a Northern soldier, 
without the menace of force, without the necessity even of a count 
of noses, without even the advent of an election in the State, they 
recognized that their time was come and gone ; that they were 
powerless, and in the hands of the civil authorities; that the}' 
must gain immunity by good behavior; that Maryland was so 
loyal that they could not make her even appear to be disloyal ; 



ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION. 235 

and the arms dropped from their hands, and they began to seek 
mercy of their traitorous confederates at Frederick by begging 
and accepting a bill of indemnity for their criminal acts? Look 
at the counties. Was there any one of them that met to pass 
resolutions approving of what proceeded in Baltimore, or poured 
forth their thousands to support the revolution? If there was, 
let some one better versed in the history of the State than I am 
name it. If not, how came the whole State, being filled with 
traitors (!), to be silent when Eichmond was ringing with the joy- 
ous acclamations that saluted the narrative of ? How is 

it that Virginia appreciates our " deliverance" more than we do 
ourselves ? How is it that we can find no tongue to celebrate the 
glories that they are rejoicing over? Why, gentlemen, not only 
was there no county that expressed any such approval, but even 
in St. Mary's, where there are only two hundred and fifty men in 
the whole county, they were not so deluded as to suppose that 
they had Maryland in their grasp ; and in Cecil on the 23d of 
April the people met and passed resolutions such as Cecil has al- 
ways acted upon, professing not neutrality, as Kentuckians did, 
not a desire for the removal of "the Northern hordes," not that 
our soil should not be polluted by any individuals crossing it in 
arms, but declaring their determination to stand by and maintain 
the government of the United States (applause), branding as trai- 
tors the men who had attempted to gain the reputation of patriots, 
and themselves leading off in the chorus that swept all round the 
States in one unbroken jubilee over the failure of the attempted 
revolution. (Great applause.) And immediately following were 
the resolutions of Alleghany County consigning to the halter their 
representatives in the Legislature if they should dare to vote for 
an Ordinance of Secession ; "and then followed the resolutions of 
Washington County, just preceding their great election — -itself 
held, I believe, on the second or third of May — declaring their un- 
alterable devotion to the Constitution and the Union, and their 
determination to abide by it always, followed up two or three 
days afterward by casting 2300 out of the 3800 votes of the coun- 
ty for the Union candidate without opposition. And then follow- 
ed the great meeting in Frederick ; and intermediate here in our 
midst, all through our wards, when the Legislature ventured to 
attempt to fix on us a military despotism in the disguise of a 
bill of public safety, copying the provisions and the spirit of 



236 ADDRESS TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE 

their infernal police law for the city to fix the yoke on the peo- 
ple of the State, as they fixed that on the neck of the people 
of this city, our people quietly met in their wards and passed 
their resolutions, which were followed up in so many of the coun- 
ties of the State that even the Legislature let drop their infernal 
machine, and did not venture to put it to a vote. (Applause.) 

A*nd where were we, fellow-citizens, all this time, for it was 
dropped on the second or third of May? In whose power was 
the capital of the United States at that moment, on the hypothe- 
sis of the disloyalty of Maryland ? There were six hundred reg- 
ulars there on the 18th of April ; there were one thousand Penn- 
sylvanians, wholly without drilling and ununiformecl ; and that 
constituted the protection of the capital of the United States on 
the 19th of April. On that day one Massachusetts regiment 
marched through, its last company only having been assailed. 
From that day until the 26th of April there were no more troops 
in Washington than I have enumerated. Up to the second of 
May they could count only about 6000 troops for the defense of 
the capital, and there were at that time 6000 at Harper's Ferry, 
and cars there ready to bring them down, and 3000 men armed in 
the city of Baltimore. 

Suppose the State of Maryland had been, as men now impu- 
dently say she is, disloyal, I ask in whose power was the capital 
of the United States? On that supposition, there can be no doubt 
that it was ours — ours by a march of forty miles — ours as long as 
we could hold it, it may be as long as the Southern Confederates 
have held Bull Eun. And here, gentlemen, I desire to say that 
it is to the fault of the Confederates themselves, the remarkable 
lack of that quality which Danton said was the essence of revolu- 
tion, audacity, audacity, audacity — it is to their failure in that 
first and indispensable quality of revolutionary leaders, it is to 
the absence of that quality that we now owe (be Maryland loyal 
or disloyal) the possession of the capital of the United States. It 
was not saved by the promptness of Northern volunteers ; it was 
not saved by the forecast of the administration, that during its 
first month labored under the delusion that peace and not war 
was before it ; it was not by the forecast of that wretched old 
dotard Buchanan (hisses), who now mumbles about energy and 
activity from his home at Wheatland ; it was neither one nor the 
other ; but it was because revolutionists had undertaken the work, 



ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION. 237 

without having the quality of revolutionists, that we still hold it, 
and that the glorious emblem of the republic floats from its dome. 
(Applause.) Baltimore, so the myth goes by timid creatures in 
our city, who whisper to people in Washington and tell their fears 
for facts, and begrime the reputation of their native city, or spread 
in still more dangerous form their fancies through the columns 
of the Northern press to poison the minds of our fellow-citizens 
against us — these people would fain repeat that here is the very 
gate of hell ; that its seething and boiling fire bubbles under our 
feet perpetually, and that nothing keeps it down excepting their 
sleepless vigilance — fit guardians for such a post! and "Lincoln's 
myrmidons." (Great laughter.) Where were these gentlemen 
that were to keep the peace in Baltimore City during that awful 
period from the 19th of April to the 14th of May? — time enough 
in the city of Paris, where revolutionists understand their work, 
to have gone through all the phases of a revolution, installed a 
new power, tried and beheaded their antagonists, and forgotten 
the thing as an old event. It was not until the 14th of May that 
General Butler marched into this "disloyal" city, teeming, as we 
are now taught to believe, with raging revolutionists, requiring 
10,000 men more — so say some men of the last generation — to 
keep them down. General Butler marched one morning into the 
southern part of Baltimore, marched up to Federal Hill, com- 
fortably encamped his men in the rain, issued a proclamation, in 
which he (understanding Baltimore better than those in it who 
delight to malign it) appealed to and trusted to the loyal men of 
Baltimore, having come, as he said, with little more than a bod}-- 
guard — less than 1000 men in a hostile city of 230,000 inhabit- 
ants. That was the first appearance of troops here. Now tell 
me why (if there were the disloyal elements to the extent that is 
supposed), during all that period, nothing had been clone. Why 
was there no array to resist his entrance ? Why did it have no 
other effect excepting that Union men walked down the street and 
said, "Well, we are afraid it will have the effect of changing some 
of our weak-kneed brethren." That was the only doubt express- 
ed about it, except that one despairing individual thought that 
the hill being in the possession of the troops of the United States 
would frighten all the market-women away, and we should have 
no lettuce for some time. (Laughter.) 

How did the Legislature of Maryland understand the position 



238 ADDRESS TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE 

of affairs in the state ? They Lad prayed and besought to be re- 
called again into existence. Thcv had died a natural death in 
March the year previous, having signalized their short power by 
some events which were to form a remarkable antithesis to events 
to follow them. They had passed almost unanimously a resolu- 
tion declaring that I, in voting Mr. Pennington into the speaker's 
chair of the national House of Representatives, in order to pre- 
vent the then incipient revolution, did not represent the people 
of Maryland. They had ejected the respectable members from 
the city of Baltimore in the last hour of their session, in order that 
they might make room for those who were to follow them, and 
be more fit companions for the majority. They had previously 
passed a Police Law, in which they had been careful to provide 
that " no Black Republican, or approver or indorser of the Help- 
er book," should ever be a policeman under that law in the city 
of Baltimore. (Laughter.) And such is the poetical justice of 
time and Providence, that within a few months past we have seen 
a man set over the police of Baltimore by a "Black Republican" 
general, and N. P. Banks's name signed to an order to enforce the 
law ; and some of the gentlemen who passed that law arc now 
appreciating that, although a Black Republican could not be a 
policeman under their law, he might be a policeman over its au- 
thors and commissioners. (Great laughter.) 

Thus ends the first act of the Maryland Assembly — more 
wretched in its character, more ignorant, more unfit for its po- 
sition, less representing the dignity and the intelligence of the 
State of Maryland, more begrimed by filthy lucre than any Leg- 
islature within my memory. Men supposed that it had been car- 
ried to its burial and buried out of our sight forever, and if not 
out of our memor}', at least out of our grateful recollection; and, 
doubtless, one great element in the pertinacity with which the 
governor refused to recall the Assembly was his distinct remem- 
brance of their unfitness for their duty, and his unwillingness that 
the State should be degraded by their again assembling. (Ap- 
plause.) But in an evil hour he assembled them. For what? 
According to the unanimous avowal of those who demanded it, 
to take the sense of the people of Maryland as to whether they 
wished to remain in the Union or to go out of it. They met, 
and an elaborate report was prepared and delivered before that 
body, making great complaifits of divers acts of illegality and op- 



ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION. 239 

prcssion that had been perpetrated within the territory of Mary- 
land by President Lincoln, but ultimately coming to the conclu- 
sion that they were unanimously opposed to the assembling of a 
Convention at that time. 

" At the time when the Legislature was called together," says 
this singular document, " there was certainly but little difference 
of opinion among its members of all parties as to the propriety 
of speedily adopting measures to secure the objects referred to. 
Since that time, the rapid and extraordinary development of 
events, and of the warlike purposes of the administration, the con- 
centration of large bodies of troops in our midst and upon our 
borders, and the actual and threatened military occupation of the 
State, have naturally enough produced great changes of .opinion 
and feeling among our citizens." (Laughter.) "They have no 
hesitation in expressing their belief now that there is almost 
unanimous feeling in the State against calling a Convention at 
the present time." (Laughter.) Since when ? It goes on to as- 
sign the reasons. Now judge: 

" To the committee, the single fact of the military occupation 
of our soil by the Northern troops in the service of the govern- 
ment, against the wishes of our people and the solemn protest of 
the State executive, is a sufficient and conclusive reason for post- 
poning the subject to a period when the federal ban shall be no 
longer upon us." 

It goes on to say : " The Constitution is silenced by the bayo- 
nets which surround us, and it is not worth while for us to fancy 
ourselves beneath its aegis. It would be criminal as well as fool- 
ish to shut our eyes to the 'fact that we will not be permitted to 
organize and arm our citizens, let our rights and Constitution be 
what they may." 

That is to say, gentlemen, when there were not troops enough 
in Washington to defend it ; when there were none to be spared 
from Washington, when there was not a single soldier within the 
limits of Baltimore, when there were not three or four thousand 
upon the soil of Maryland all told, these patriots, who tell us that 
the Constitution is silenced, that our rights arc trampled down, 
that we are oppressed, think that these are the very reasons why 
they should not appeal to the people of Maryland for their own 
protection ! They may be the fit representatives of what is called 
secession ; they certainly are the representatives of that prudence 



240 ADDRESS TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE 

which Maryland secessionists have always substituted for audaci- 
ty ; who will neither appeal to arms or the ballot-box against, op 
pression unless the oppressor first slays his hand; but these men 
are not the representatives of the loyal and Tree men of Maryland, 
[f affairs were as they represent them, that was the time to appeal 
to the people of Maryland. It mailers not whence oppression 
comes, it matters not in what shape it be presented, it matters not 
how overwhelming may be its force, when oppression shall un- 
sheathe the sword,.I mistake the tone and temper of the people 
of Maryland if they would slop any more than the men of Lex- 
ington and Concord Stopped to count their antagonists in 1775. 
(Applause.) 1 suppose that it was not the presence of the mil- 
itary which overawed the Legislature of Maryland; it was that 
they, like the Police Commissioners, like Marshal Kane, and like 

"Trimble commanding" (laughter), and like all his supporters 
and followers, adjutants and aids, had all found that, while the 
people of Maryland were almost unanimously opposed to calling 
a Convention, that, unanimity resolved ilself into these elements 
— a small minority Of the people wanting the majority to vole 
with them, but knowing they would not, and therefore not want- 

me a Convention called which would reveal irrefutably their in- 

significance of numbers, and the overwhelming majority of the 
people of Maryland, who did not want to be pestered with a vote 
to put down such wretched revolutionists. (Applause.) Now, am 
1 right, or am I wrong in my estimate of the causes? (".Right.") 
That was in May. 
On the L8th of June a congressional election was held, to which 

both the mayor and the governor had referred the people as a tit 

opportunity to express their devotion to, or their abhorrence of, 

the government,; and how did they express if? 1 have already 
told you that the Washington County men voted 4000 out of 
5000 votes for their member ol' Assembly, and that Cecil County 
followed up her resolution at a, speeial election by voting three 
fourths oi' her vote in favor it, and that is an index ol' what the 
Stale did. In the great upper district there was no opposition. 

In Mr. Webster's district there was no opposition. In the district 
now represented by Mr.Crisficld there was a candidate for peace, 
who attempted to oppose him. A peace man opposed Mr. Leary. 
A Union man with Southern sympathies claimed and received the 
SUffroces ol' the 1th district. There was but one avowed seccs- 



ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION. 241 

sionist throughout the State of Maryland that ventured to ask a 
vote, and that was in Mr. Calvert's district, and for the first time 
in many years one not a Democrat carried the district. (Ap- 
plause.) How did the voting foot up throughout the whole State? 
If you give to the secessionists every vote not cast, making no 
allowance for lukewarm men, no allowance for the doubtful, hesi- 
tating, floating vote that had not made up its mind whether it 
would bo for or against the government, the conditional men, all 
the people who are on this side to-day and on that side to-mor- 
row, or all the time on both sides (laughter), separating all those 
men and giving them to the secession side of the question, the Un- 
ion men of Maryland at that election, with no opposition in two 
of the districts, and no avowed opposition upon secession grounds 
any where excepting in one of the districts, cast a great majority 
of the whole vote of the State. (Great applause.) And, gentle- 
men, for whom? Not for men who arc pledged to shun responsi- 
bilities, to avoid votes, to let the government bleed to death if 
need be, to talk about neutrality in Maryland, to join the govern- 
or in opposing the transit of Northern troops, but men pledged be- 
fore their constituents, pledged before the Conventions that nom- 
inated them, pledged in every way that can bind honorable men 
to vote every man that the government should demand, and any 
amount of money that the government should say was needed — 
not for the purpose of making peace, not for the purpose of hold- 
ing out the olive-branch, not for the purpose of making treaties 
with traitors, but to disperse them by arms. (Tremendous cheer- 
ing.) 

What followed ? The arrest of Kane. (A voice : "They ought 
to hang him." Cheers.) They left him in power till after the 
election. Secessionists who were so fond of the truth can not 
say that they were frightened and coerced in the election ! It 
was wise to do so. They fortunately have no excuse of that 
kind, because at the time of the election there were soldiers at 
Baltimore and soldiers nowhere else, and it was only in Baltimore 
that they were partially successful. But, after that was taken out 
of their mouths, Kane was arrested ; and that was one great out- 
rage (laughter) ; and then the loyal commissioners, who protested 
their loyalty, and supposed that other people had memories as 
short as their own, and had forgotten their acts of war from the 
19th to the 24th of April — these gentlemen in the interest of 

Q 



242 ADDKESS TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE 

"Peace and Order," when Governor Banks, with wise discrimina- 
tion, bad stopped at arresting one mischievous man in the hope 
that other mischievous men, taking warning, would be peaceable 
— they in the interest of peace and order, or possibly hoping that 
a great city swarming with bad men, in the period of a great 
revolution, and with a great deal of revolutionary blood floating 
through the Irish of the 8th ward (laughter) — these stalwart re- 
formers, and friends of peace and good government, supposing that 
all these elements with no police would be much more quiet than 
when they were aggravated into resistance by a police on their 
side — they told their policemen that they had no farther use for 
them at that time; they should continue to draw their pay, but 
they were not expected to do any duty. (Laughter.) General 
Banks, being a practical man, interpreted " no- duty" to be any 
duty that they might see fit to do ; and as they had some train- 
ing in military matters, and had shown themselves pretty good 
instruments to begin a revolution, though their masters did not 
prove so good leaders in it after it was started, came to the very 
natural conclusion that possibly a vagrant police with nothing to 
do, with masters equally idle, might find something to do ; and 
he took care of the masters, and that w T as another great and un- 
speakable " outrage." (Laughter.) A howl of indignation arose 
to the pitying heavens against the " outrage" of arresting men 
who only opened the door to civil discord in a city of 250,000 in- 
habitants ! Every principle of American liberty was appealed to 
to insure traitors liberty for mischief; and they wrote their ap- 
peal to the Legislature, and their appeal to the Legislature found 
a fitting advocate in the gentleman whose name I have had oc- 
casion so often to refer to. A long, elaborate, insidious, and dis- 
ingenuous report was after a while brought forward, in which all 
the history of the government was read backward ; all the arts 
of special pleading were applied to the misconstruction of the 
Constitution ; rash assertions as to the history of the Convention 
were strewn all through it ; and we were called upon to believe 
that George Washington had framed and recommended the adop- 
tion of a Constitution which would be very good if every body 
would obey it, but would be very worthless if any body should 
say he did not wish to obey it ;" and that George Washington, and 
the other wise men who surrounded him in the Convention, hav- 
ing provided on the face of the Convention for the suppression 



ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION. £48 

of insurrection, and declared that every law of a State should be 
in subordination to the supreme law of the land, the Constitution 
and the laws of Congress made in pursuance of it, had yet left 
open this great, wide passage-way for all the evils that they had 
attempted to exclude, by excepting from that subordination that 
law which should annul the whole Constitution ; that case in 
which a faction should get possession of the authorities of a State, 
should put their treason in the shape of law, array armies for its 
defense, and defy the government. I have no doubt that the 
author of that report is a respectable lawyer within a narrow 
sphere, and I think that those who read the report will come to 
the conclusion that he has, like a wise lawyer, confined his studies 
to his department. (Laughter.) 

That Legislature raised the awful question as to whether the 
government of the United States could arrest men in arms against 
its authority! (Laughter.) They did not venture to reorganize 
the militia of the State. They found that it was dangerous. They 
could pass laws of indemnity for men who had been guilty of 
treason, as if an act of indemnity by the State of Maryland would 
bar an indictment in the United States Court; but that was out 
of their line of practice. (Laughter.) They thought they could 
debauch the minds of the people, a law-abiding and law-loving 
people, habituated to see the law enforced only through the tri- 
bunals, by the sheriff, the judgment of the court, the constable — 
unaccustomed to the short and sharp methods of military sup- 
pression equally constitutional against armed insurrection. They 
seized every opportunity to mislead the people of Maryland into 
the supposition that their rights were violated whenever the para- 
mount law of the safety of the republic, embodied in that clause of 
the Constitution which authorizes Congress to call forth the militia 
to suppress insurrection, was required to be acted upon in lieu of 
the ordinary methods of enforcing the law through the judicial 
tribunals ; and they attempted to delude and excite the people of 
Maryland by representing that as a violation of the fundamental 
law. The people of Maryland were not so ignorant as the major- 
ity of the Legislature, and understood the construction of their 
fathers better than the gentlemen of the secession school. They 
understood that just as the Legislature can take land against the 
will of the owner for the purpose of making a railway or other 
public improvement, so the United States can seize railways when 



244 ADDRESS TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE 

necessary for the transportation of troops, so they can occupy sites 
for fortifications, and when men arc in arms against the govern- 
ment, they can arrest them without process, just as when they see 
them in serried ranks opposed to them in the open field they can 
shoot them down without having inquired by a jury whether they 
be traitors or a loyal man. All their machinations fell harmless 
before the people of Maryland; and, adjourning from day to day, 
finally the fatal hour met the Maryland Legislature. It seemed 
likely to break the law of all things mortal and sit forever, when 
the administration, impelled by unfounded fear of mischief at their 
hands, silenced their harmless chattering by taking away their 
heads, and leaving their tails to writhe. 

The people of Maryland saw with indifference or delight their 
dispersion, yet wondered at the importance attached to them. 
On the policy or legality of that measure I shall at present say 
nothing. 

Now, gentlemen, that is the history of secession in Maryland ; 
it is the whole history ; it is the close of the history. (Applause.) 
It is going to let the election this fall go by default and by con- 
fession. It did not venture to nominate a man in this city the 
other day ; it will not press the election of its candidate for gov- 
ernor in November; it will have no contestants for the House of 
Delegates in one half the counties of the State; it will make no 
contest for the Senate except in two or three counties which arc 
doubtful, and there only for the purpose of holding a veto on the 
Union men in the Legislature, and it is that we arc specially bound 
to take care of. But secession as an active, dangerous, and agita- 
ting clement, I say, now lies writhing in its last agonies in Mary- 
land. (Great applause.) I do not doubt that very nearly one 
third of the people of the State arc disloyal — not that they will 
take up arms on the secession side, but they will not take up arms 
on the Union side ; they are disloyal. In my judgment, that is a 
very large estimate of the strength of the secession faction in Ma- 
ryland this day. It has found the limits of its power ; the nature 
of the beast is the same, only it has been deprived of its fangs ; 
it can now do nothing but mumble false prophecies about the 
coming of Jefferson Davis, and pray him not to falsify their pre- 
dictions. 

Maryland has been true in heart thus far. She has not fur- 
nished her quota of troops to put down the rebellion within or 



ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION. 245 

without Maryland. That is partly her fault ; chiefly the fault of 
her governor, who paralyzed the energies of her citizens when 
they were ready to respond to the first call of the government. 
But those charged with military affairs at Washington are not with- 
out their share of responsibility ; for when the governor refused 
to call forth the contingent of Maryland, and when the law was 
pointed out to them under which they could send their orders to 
any officer of the militia, and the names of officers holding com- 
missions and ready to obey the orders of the government were 
laid before them, and the President had drawn in blank the order 
and directed it to be sent to the Secretary of War, it rested on his 
table unacted on. When subsequently, after the 14th of May, the 
governor determined conditionally to call forth the contingent of 
Maryland, and officers went to Washington and offered themselves 
ready to respond to the orders of the government, the War De- 
partment declined to receive them first under the call for men for 
three months, and when General Kenly offered, himself, to call 
forth his brigade if it would be accepted as a brigade for the war, 
that also was declined. (Applause.) It was quite apparent that 
the Department felt small confidence in the Union men of Mary- 
land, and were not at pains to conceal their indifference touching 
their aid. After that, it was not to be supposed that others would 
be in a hurry to receive such a rebuff. These doubts of our loy- 
alty were inspired by persons apparently who knew nothing of 
Maryland or of its men ; who have not the confidence of its peo- 
ple, and arc unknown in its affairs, and have constituted them- 
selves the chief advisers at Washington with reference to Mary- 
land affairs. These things are undoubtedly deplorable. We suffer 
— our reputation suffers by the conduct of the administration to- 
ward the State throughout the whole country at this time. It is 
our misfortune to have such citizens ; it is the fault of the govern- 
ment to listen to their counsels. (Great applause.) 

Wc have labored under peculiar disadvantages in common with 
all the central slave States. The peculiarity of the present crisis 
is the wonderful activity and energy of the people and the State 
authorities contrasted with the relative inactivity of the central 
government. In the free States the governments have been loyal, 
and they have organized and aided the enthusiasm of the volun- 
teers. The central slave States, betrayed or deserted by their 
State governments, have been abandoned by the national govern- 



24:6 ADDKESS TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE 

ment almost to their unaided resources — disarmed, unorganized, 
half defended. 

But, gentlemen, a different state of affairs, I believe, now exists. 
I think now the ear of power is open to wiser counsels touching 
the military policy to be pursued in Maryland, and, I trust, in the 
central slave States generally. I know that now they listen to 
and act upon the representations of my friend, Mr. Purnell. (Ap- 
plause.) I know that they now listen to Governor Thomas, of 
the Upper District. (Renewed applause.) I know that they listen 
to' the appeals of Mr. Wallace, of Cambridge. (Continued ap- 
plause.) I know that now they listen to the suggestions of Mr. 
Dodge, the Chief of Police. (Great applause.) I know that while 
for long months they refused to arm our Home Guard, even at 
the solicitations of General Banks, repeatedly pressed, at length 
they have come to think that it is perhaps a part of the duty of the 
government, in dealing with a great rebellion, to inquire for, and 
to organize and arm loyal men for their own defense in disturbed 
districts ; and now we have the Purnell legion forming at Pikes- 
ville, Governor Thomas's brigade forming in the upper portion of 
the State, several regiments organizing around the city, two al- 
ready in the service of the government, and others forming in the 
lower part of the State ; and, in my judgment, so soon as the peo- 
ple shall, in November, have elected a governor and a Legislature 
that will do for the people of Maryland what every where has 
been done by the Legislatures of our brethren in the North for 
their volunteers, give them the aid, and countenance, and pecun- 
iary assistance of the State, and the outfit that is necessary to facil- 
itate enlistments, that Maryland will stand in this contest as she 
has always stood in every other contest, not lagging behind her 
brethren, but struggling with them for the foremost rank where 
glory is to be won. (Great applause.) 

If I may be allowed to criticise the conduct of an administra- 
tion which I did not help to make, but which I rejoice was formed 
— for John Bell is a traitor — and for whose success I am more 
earnestly anxious than for any that has wielded power in my day 
(applause) — an administration which, weak or strong, is the last 
and only hope of the American people, which must be supported 
let whatever else may fail (great applause) — in spite of the con- 
tempt with which it has treated the people of Maryland, in spite 
of that lack of magnanimous wisdom which would have taught it 



ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION. 247 

not to overlook the great body of the central States in high civil 
and military appointments — however much these things may 
grate upon our feelings, however much they may tend to dampen 
the spirits and slacken the energy of our people, however much 
the administration may find too late that it has weakened its 
power, however much already they may have expanded the the- 
atre of war and advanced the frontier of the fight nearer to the 
national capital — just in proportion as these disastrous conse- 
quences have followed for that great error in point of public pol- 
icy, just by so much the more earnest motives are we, men of Ma- 
ryland, called on to forget the past, to obliterate its bitter recollec- 
tions, to forbid any thing like pride to arise in our gorges, to put 
down at the bidding of patriotism every ill spirit that would par- 
alyze our arms, and, forgetting the past, rush forward to the fu- 
ture, and take our revenge of those who have slighted us by 
heaping the coals of fire of repentance upon their head. (Great 
applause.) 

That the administration chose to constitute itself on a strictly 
party basis in its higher department is not a just subject of com- 
plaint, especially after the President had tendered to Mr. Gilmer, 
of North Carolina, a place in his cabinet, which he declined. But 
it is a matter of complaint that the importance of securing sup- 
port, organizing friends, arming loyal citizens in the great central 
slave States was so gravely underrated ; and while the other de- 
partments are filled with men equal to their respective duties, it is 
a matter of great regret that those departments chiefly and direct- 
ly charged with the military policy of the administration have 
fallen below the requirements of the times. ' They spent one 
month of precious time before apparently they took one step to 
meet the storm that was blackening the whole heavens before 
them. Then, while yet war was afar, ere Tennessee had yielded 
to the gentle pressure of the Southern bayonet, while yet Mis- 
souri was free from armed invasion, ere secession had grown to 
rebellion in Kentucky, they let pass the golden opportunity of 
feeling their way through these great States and finding friends 
over that great region. They left the friends of the Union not 
only unable to fight its battles, but unable to defend themselves. 
They left a majority of the people of Tennessee to be borne down 
by violence from abroad, and to be disheartened by the desertion 
of the national government. They allowed disaffection to spread 



248 ADDRESS TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE 

in Kentucky, until Kentucky, in spite of her overwhelming Union 
majority, hung trembling in the balance, and was driven to repel 
invasion from her soil. They left Missouri without the aid of ad- 
ditional soldiers, and her own Home Guard only half armed, until 
she was nearly overrun. They left Maryland without a musket 
in the hand of one of her sons for four dangerous months after 
they were in power. Had they sought, as a wise policy w r ould 
have dictated, friends in the midst of the doubtful States, they 
could have saved Tennessee; they could have commenced the 
war upon the northern borders of Alabama and of Georgia, where 
we know the partisans of the government, though now silenced, 
swarm by the thousands ; they could have held possession of the 
great central nucleus of the Alleghany Mountains, filled with its 
freemen ready to descend in every direction upon the plains be- 
low, carrying with them the emblem of hope and peace to our 
oppressed brethren in the cotton districts. Had Maryland been 
properly armed, had her citizens been called out, had even that 
despised contingent of the three months' men been accepted, they 
might not now have been confined to one railway for all their 
Western communications ; the loyal part of Virginia might have 
crossed the Alleghany Mountains and stretched to the Blue Ridge. 
The whole face and aspect of the war would have been changed 
by timely attention to the first elements of success in dealing with 
an insurrection — to find out the men on the spot, in the disturbed 
district, as near as possible to the focus of the rebellion, who are 
there interested in putting out the flames, and give them at least 
an opportunity of aiding in their own defense. The event of Bull 
Run has, I think, made the administration sadder and wiser men. 
They possibly have reflected that there the despised Maryland 
contingent might have turned that tide of battle, for it was just 
four thousand men that converted a victory into a defeat when 
brought against our exhausted brethren, borne down by the heat 
of that day's conflict. They have now begun — begun in earnest 
— I trust begun successfully — (applause) — to organize the men of 
the great central slave States, who to them are an elemeut of un- 
told power. Equally brave with their Northern brethren, they 
are a thousand times more interested in suppressing the rebellion, 
for it touches their homes, their hearths, their lives. Massachu- 
setts has her pride in the republic. So have Maryland, and Ken- 
tucky, and Tennessee, and Missouri, and Delaware. Massachu- 



ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION. 249 

setts has her interest in the cotton region. So has Maryland, as 
well as her interest in her own fields. But, beyond all that, we 
of the central slave States have our liberty at stake ; if we fail we 
are a conquered people ; we pass from the glories of the American 
republic to be the suspected, watched, and chained subjects of a 
power we abhor, and which hates us. 

Having already traced the position of Maryland, I need now 
but point your eyes for inspiration to the present condition of 
Kentucky. Betrayed by her treacherous governor, placed in the 
disloyal attitude of neutrality by her last Legislature, invaded by 
an armed force from Tennessee, deserted or assailed by such men 
as Breckinridge and his associates, she has, as one man almost, 
through her present Legislature, proclaimed her readiness to do 
her duty. When her energy was quickened into activity by 
actual invasion, then her Legislature met; made a loan for two 
millions of dollars, called out 40,000 volunteers ; and then, as if 
to cover with contumely the men who speak only of " our South- 
ern brethren," they passed by overwhelming majorities that touch- 
ing vote of thanks to the men of Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois, who 
came rushing in arms ("Black Eepublicans" and "Lincoln's 
myrmidons" as they are) to protect Kentucky against her South- 
ern brethren. (Applause.) 

And there is Missouri, neglected by the War Department, de- 
fended by her half-armed and half-organized sons until they were 
decimated by superior numbers, and the gallant Lyon fell a sacri- 
fice to his unsupported heroism ; and then, when they came to 
rest on the support of the government of the United States, two 
thirds of their state was overrun, and a large body of troops and 
Home Guards captured right on the great highway of the Missouri 
Eiver for lack of timely support. 

It is vain to inquire who is responsible for such disasters — the 
War Department, charged with organizing the force, or the mili- 
tary officer commissioned to lead them ; it lies between them, and 
this country will hold both responsible. I fear that the man to 
whom the destinies of Missouri are committed is fitter to issue 
proclamations violating every principle of the law of the land, 
and looking only to one purpose — his political elevation — than he 
is either to organize a force to repel invasion, or, it may be, to lead 
it after it is organized. He is not able (such is the last account) 
to move yet over ground where Lyon moved with none but Mis- 



250 ADDRESS TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE 

sourians at his back (applause) — not able yet to move because of 
lack of transportation, surrounded by loyal people and by loyal 
States — not able to move for lack of subsistence, in the very midst 
of the great granary of the United States. No man can believe, 
if these things be true, that a heavy debt of responsibility does not 
rest at somebody's door, to be answered for at some not very dis- 
tant day. I feel for the men of Missouri, for they have not lain 
supinely down and waited to be defended; but they have been 
overborne ; I say they are entitled to look to the government not 
merely for willing troops — they have been furnished by the 
thousand with that spontaneous enthusiasm which finds no equal 
in the history of the world — they are entitled to a leader who will 
not lack transportation, nor food, nor means to reach the enemy. 
(Applause.) Instead, they have a man who publishes gasconading 
proclamations fitter for a European despot than an American 
officer, such as " I do hereby extend and declare established mar- 
tial law throughout the State of Missouri," two thirds of it in the 
possession of the armed rebels ; " the lines of the army of occu- 
pation in this state are for the present declared to extend from 
Leavenworth, by way of the posts of Jefferson City, Rolla, and 
Ironton, to Cape Girardeau on the Mississippi River," within 
which they took Lexington from him the other day ; and then 
followed by the hrutum fulmen of a threat at the bottom — " all per- 
sons who shall be taken with arms in their hands within these 
lines shall be tried by court-martial, and, if found guilty, will be 
shot" — in the face of the solemn provision of the American Con- 
stitution that no man out of the military service can be condemned 
except by a jury of his peers before a court of the State or dis- 
trict in which the crime was committed, with an indictment and 
evidence, and the right to have counsel and all the precious guards 
of the common law thrown around to protect his life. He is to 
be tried and shot at the will of General Fremont, and whoever he 
may see fit to appoint to try him over a drum-head court-martial. 
It received its fit reward in having the very country over which 
he usurped despotic power swept from beneath him. And then, 
of course, it was impossible for a man who has high political as 
well. as military aspirations, to overlook in this agitation the Negro 
Question as an element of popularity, and thereupon we have this 
lord and master of the free people of Missouri dealing thus with 
their property : " The property, real and personal, of all persons 



ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION. 251 

in the State of Missouri who shall take up arms against the United 
States, and who shall be directly proven to have taken active part 
with their enemies in the field, is declared to be confiscated to the 
public use, and their slaves, if any they have, are hereby declared 
free." 

The President, with a straightforward honesty that has marked 
his every act, seized the earliest opportunity to rebuke that usur- 
pation of illegal authority. I only regret that he did not go far- 
ther, and mark with his disapprobation that clause declaring mar- 
tial law, and that he did not punish the usurpation by revoking 
the commission of the officer who, charged with high and respons- 
ible command in the midst of a slave State, gave the enemies of 
the government so serious a ground on which to impeach their 
policy, and who treated the representatives of the people with so 
much contempt as in the face of the very law which they had 
passed scarcely one month before, declaring exactly how the 
property of rebels should be dealt with, dared thus flagrantly to 
usurp legislative powers, and deal out wholesale confiscation and 
emancipation as if he were above all law. I think that the inter- 
ests of the people of Missouri would be safer if we had some one 
who could be content with high military command, without play- 
ing the dictator, who would confine himself to marshaling his 
hosts, removing armed opposition, vindicating the authority of the 
government, and, like George Washington, be content to obey the 
laws, and not either violate them or attempt to make them. (Ap- 
plause.) 

Gentlemen, I have detained you already too long (" Go on"), 
and I have only one or two observations farther to submit to you. 
The policy of the administration and Congress in dealing with 
this rebellion has been eminently liberal. The policy of the peo- 
ple in the rebellious States has been eminently illiberal and barba- 
rous. The men who pass along our streets and talk about oppres- 
sion, are careful never to refer to the enactments of the Southern 
usurping Legislature ; they never refer to that law which authori- 
zes and directs the President of the Confederate States to imprison 
every alien enemy, meaning our fellow-citizens— which banishes 
every citizen of the United States who will not acknowledge their 
authority — which sequesters ever} 7 " cent's w r orth of property of 
every man living in any of the Northern States — which dooms to 
the halter, or to exile or imprisonment, every resident who, how- 



252 ADDRESS TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE 

ever peaceable, refused to acknowledge their usurping domina- 
tion. Were we to apply that rule to the gentlemen who insult 
our moderation, how quickly should we in Baltimore be freed 
from the scowling looks, and the averted glances, and the insolent 
tones, and the menaces of retaliation that meet us every day and 
every where. How different, gentlemen, is the policy of the gov- 
ernment of the United States. It confiscates nobody's property, 
even although taken in arms against the government. Fremont's 
proclamation presumed, in the face of the act of Congress, to do 
that. The law had forbidden it ; the law condemns only property 
which has been used for rebellious purposes ; it sets free only 
slaves that have been used to prosecute the war; it confiscates 
only property that has been used in the course of commerce be- 
tween the rebellious States and the loyal States, and there it 
stops ; lays hold of the thing that sins ; it confiscates nothing 
beyond : it leaves the estates of the gentlemen who have left 
Maryland to wage war against their native State untouched by 
the law of confiscation ; it leaves the negroes, however powerful 
an clement they might be made of embarrassment in the slave- 
holding States, untouched, save where their masters have first used 
them to aid in breaking down the authority of the United States. 
Moderation, liberality is every where manifested by the govern- 
ment of the United States, just as vengeance, illiberality, a dispo- 
sition to grasp and seize every thing within their power, to strip 
honest, innocent people, widows and children not less than men 
in arms, of their last support, even of the money that was confided 
to the faith of tlifcir States by being invested in their public secu- 
rities. Gentlemen, that is the liberality, the respect for property, 
that these people show toward our fellow-citizens. It may be the 
foundation of a serious appeal for more stringent measures if 
events do not speedily render them unnecessary. (Applause.) 

Gentlemen, there is nothing of such hopeful augury as the 
moderation of the United States in dealing with this great rebel- 
lion; and on that one subject of the freedom of the slave, tempt- 
ing as it is to political aspirants, tempting as it is to men who wish 
a short method of dealing with a great rebellion, those in power 
have felt the responsibilities of power, and know that they are 
wielding power only to support the laws. They know that they 
are just as much bound to protect that property as any other 
property, and that no citizen's property can be taken at the will 



ON THE TKESENT STATE OF THE NATION. 258 

of the government otherwise than according to law and the Con- 
stitution. Only ignorant fanatics prate about decrees of emanci- 
pation. Therefore it is that every where wherever the arms of 
the United States have penetrated any of the slaveholding States, 
you have found no servile rebellion following their ranks or break- 
ing out to meet them. A few stragglers find their way into the 
camps, a few seek protection, a few seize the opportunity of run- 
ning away from their masters, but any thing like a servile insur- 
rection has not been heard of any where in the presence of the 
armies of the United States. That is the short reply to every im- 
putation upon the faith of the government. (Applause.) 

But the great question remains, Can the government succeed in 
maintaining its authority ? ("Yes.") That question events alone 
can answer. In my judgment, if the wisdom which wields the 
power be only equal to the enthusiasm, the devotion, the liberal- 
ity with which the people and the States have lavished men and 
money in the cause of the republic, then there is no doubt as to 
what the result will be. (Applause.) It may be that here now, 
as heretofore in the history of the world, a great cause may fail in 
the field for lack of great ability to guide it in the proper depart- 
ments of the cabinet. We humbly and earnestly trust that that 
will not be the case. Eashness has already been punished ; dis- 
regard of high military advice has already met humiliation ; hu- 
miliation has probably brought forth repentance, and repentance 
is the beginning of wisdom. I have reason to believe that here- 
after military questions will be left to military men, and military 
men with heads upon their shoulders will be allowed to organize 
and direct the military power of the United States. (Great ap- 
plause.) I know, fellow-citizens, that great changes have been 
wrought lately in both the military departments. Up to this 
time the blockade has been a mockery ; the Secretary of the Navy, 
after six months' experience, has found it out, and there has been . 
there a change. He has found out that age and decrepitude are 
not indispensable for command, and that Southern birth and resi- 
dence are not disqualifications. Maryland and Delaware have 
been honored by high and responsible commands in the persons 
of Goldsborough and Dupont, who are about to sail from our ports 
with great expeditions under their charge — already too long de- 
layed — but, in their hands, sure to prove fruitful of high enter- 
prise and great results. (Applause.) 



25i ADDRESS TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE 

The wisdom of their selections redeems many of the delays and 
blunders which have led to them. The administration have 
shown no greater knowledge of men, no greater determination to 
subordinate unjust suspicions to the necessities of the public serv- 
ice and sound policy, than when from the bosom of two slave- 
holding States they selected the leaders of these great expeditions, 
which, uniting under the same command officers of high merit 
from Massachusetts and South Carolina, together with men from 
the slave and men from the free States, fitly represent the unity 
of the national power whose banner they are charged to restore 
on the Atlantic coast. (Great applause.) 

The War Department has been taught by the misfortune of 
Dull Hun, which has broken no power nor any spirit; which 
bowed no State, nor made any heart falter ; which was felt as a 
humiliation, and which strung men's nerves to retrieve in, that 
has brought forth wisdom. They now know, if they did not 
know before, that a half-equipped army is not fit to deal with the 
desperate powers arrayed against the government. They now 
know that equality of forces is not a becoming proportion for a 
government in the face of a rebellion it is about to suppress; it 
looks too much like a struggle between a strong government and 
a weak one. They know now that it requires military knowl- 
edge to lead a host; that it requires months to convert a crowd 
into an army ; that without artillery a modern army is nothing, 
and that without cavalry it is a bird without wings ; that, without 
the means of following up a victory, victory is worthless. They 
now know that victory at Bull Run would have been disaster and 
not success ; that, had they beaten the enemy finally as they had 
beaten actually from the field at one period in the day the Con- 
federate forces, they could not have followed up the victory ; that 
if they had attempted to follow it up, they would have found 
themselves in the midst of Virginia with an army melting like 
snow beneath the sun ; that the three months' volunteers, as their 
terms of enlistment expired, would have left a remnant in the 
centre ofYirginia to be a prey for the rebels' swollen power. 
How earnestly true was the exhortation of the great military 
leader and adviser of the administration appears by this — that 
Bull Run having been fought upon the 20th of July, the army of 
the United States, under a commander oi^ relentless activity and 
energy, and of ability equal to the highest in the army, is still 



ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION. 255 

drilling, going through its parades, being organized, waiting for 
its material of war, within five miles of the City of Washington. 
All that they gained by the battle of Bull Hun was that, instead 
of being able to march in October, as Winfield Scott told them, 
they would if they let him alone, and did not push, him on before 
he was ready to go ; they arc not yet ready, and we arc past the 
middle of October itself, and probably will not be ready before 
November. But, gentlemen, when that movement takes place, it 
will be no array of straggling regiments hunting up a commander 
over a vast field of battle (laughter); it will be no disorganized 
body of regiments never bound together in a brigade, and which 
hardly saw their commander's or their companion's face until the 
day of battle, but it will be the best men of the American people 
— as good, ay, better than ever faced an enemy in the same num- 
bers before (applause), accustomed to all the evolutions of modern 
warfare, having profound confidence in their young and brilliant 
leader (great applause), accustomed by continual reconnoissances 
and skirmishes to meet the enemy in arms and learn what battle 
is, blended into that compound of steel and fire which makes an 
army ready to be launched like one of God's bolts upon the ene- 
mies of the country. (Great applause.) We may fail again, for 
war is a game of blended skill and chance whose determination 
is with the Most High (applause); but I earnestly trust and be- 
lieve we shall not fail. The activity and energy with which those 
in power are now endeavoring to second the efforts of military 
men to organize a force before encountering the chances of de- 
feat are of good augury for the republic. 

When the banner once more points forward, it will proudly ad- 
vance until the rejoicing soldier shall, like Xenophon's Greeks at 
the aspect of the Euxine, after their weary march, greet with the 
cry of "The sea," "The sea," the glancing waves of the Gulf of 
Mexico (applause); penetrating at more than one point, armies 
of deliverance shall march, not to subjugate, but to free ; not to 
violate any law of the land, but to enforce them all ; to put down 
rebellion and its armed insolence ; to restore to loyal hearts the 
security that for long months they have not known ; to restore 
the ancient boundaries of the republic; to wipe out from the es- 
cutcheon of the nation the stain of our failing arms; to restore 
our reputation before the nations of the world ; to teach men that 
liberty is not a mockery, and a republic is not another name for 



20 G ADDRESS TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE 

feebleness or anarchy ; to teach the jeering tyrants of the Old 
World that their day is not come yet; to let them know that the 
Bulwer Lyttons can prophesy in vain, and see false visions in 
their hopes of the overthrow of the great rival of England, and 
that Alison does not comprehend the greatness of this people, nor 
the peculiarity of their genius, when he indites puerile epistles 
about an Established Church and a limited monarchy for the free 
men of America. (Laughter and applause.) 

Gentlemen, wc do not want the assistance of the people across 
the water. We do not fear their hostility. We shall be glad of 
their good will ; we will not mourn if it is withdrawn. We know 
that wc owe them nothing but good will, and that we are ready 
to reciprocate. It is our duty to take care of ourselves. We 
mean to be fully up to that duty. We rely upon their interests, 
and not upon their love, to let us alone. We know that the South 
is disappointed in the expectation of having the blockade broken 
merely because John Bull counted the cost, and found that a war 
with the United States would cost more than the Southern cotton 
would pay for. Wc know very well that Louis Napoleon prefers 
not to pick any quarrel with this country, among other reasons 
because the navy of England overmatches his own, and he sees 
the time when possibly the sailors of America may be needed to 
balance the power of England. (Applause.) We know that 
while one interest would prompt him to embarrass, another, a 
greater, a near one, compels him to let us alone ; for he is sur- 
rounded by revolutionary lires, stifled but not extinct, and if he 
turns from home he may find that " fire in the rear" uncomfort- 
ably girding his revolutionary throne. (Laughter.) There is 
some sympathy, strange to say, and it has more than once been 
manifested, by the great despot of Russia for this great democ- 
racy. They seem to have a kindred feeling in their youth, their 
newness, their growing strength, their freedom from most of the 
embarrassments of other governments, and the boundless regions 
of space that invites them to expand their empire. They feel 
that to them belongs the future, however different the form of 
empire ; and although we may seek our advancement in different 
methods and in different forms, yet each, in his appropriate sphere, 
in his appointed time, in his own way, is working out the great 
problem of human destiny — we of human freedom on this side 



ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION. 257 

the Atlantic, he of human civilization among the half-civilized 
men of Asia. 

But, while we accept the courtesy of the Autocrat's good wish- 
es, we trust nothing to his good will ; our fate is in our own hands ; 
on them alone we must rely. There is now no prospect of for- 
eign intrusion, but no man can tell what a day may bring forth. 
We shall, I think, meet with no disturbance from beyond the At- 
lantic at present. To-morrow it may suit the policy of England, 
or France, or Kussia to fling their sword into the scale of our des- 
tinies, and that might decide them. Now is the time, at once, 
without delay, unitedly for us here in Maryland, as well as those 
in Kentucky and those in Missouri, with our brethren in the 
North, to scatter and destroy at one blow the armed array of our 
enemies, ere delay consolidates their power or foreign complica- 
tion embarrasses our arms. We must not merely defeat, we must 
destroy the army before Washington. That will break the mili- 
tary power of the rebellion, and whenever the sword shall be 
stricken from the hand which lifted it against the Union, the ter- 
rors of despotic power will vanish from the land, and grateful 
eyes will turn in tears to greet the unforgottcn banner of the re- 
public. 

E 



CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS SUFFICIENT FOR 
REPRESSION OF REBELLION. 

While thoroughly upholding the government in all lawful and proper 
efforts to put down the rebellion, Mr. Davis freely criticised those acts 
of doubtful expediency, and still more doubtful lawfulness, which were, 
perhaps, almost unavoidable amid such confusion of affairs and such un- 
certainty as to men, especially at the outbreak of hostilities. 

He condemned from the first the use of the word " blockade,"' as ap- 
plied to our own ports held by rebel insurgents, whereby belligerent rights 
seemed impliedly conceded, or, at any rate, whereby an argument was 
afforded to those who did concede such rights to those insurgents. lie 
condemned the virtual suspension of the habeas corpus by the President, 
which could be authorized by act of Congress alone. He condemned 
the proclamation of martial law in districts where the execution of the 
United States laws was not impeded by insurgent force. He condemned 
the permission by the government of such outrages against law, and such 
blunders in policy as Fremont was daily committing in Missouri ; and 
he boldly set forth what he thought the proper course in such respects 
to be pursued by a government restoring law and order in regions where 
both had been subverted by insurrection. 

For these utterances Mr. Davis was condemned by those extreme par- 
tisans who held that all things which could be wreaked on the insurgents 
were fair and lawful, although the attempt should involve the extinction 
of rights not less dear than the preservation of the Union itself. Yet, in 
thus condemning certain mistakes, Mr. Davis certainly offered that sup- 
port of the administration which comes from the judicious reproof of a 
friend, and therein he showed himself a truer supporter than those incau- 
tious men whose rash advice, or worse than rash actions, only added to 
the number of its enemies. 

Mr. Davis availed himself of an opportunity to speak on these points 
as early as November, 1861, at Brooklyn, in the following address: 

Mr. President and Gentlemen of this Association, — In 
the corner-stone of the southern wing of the Capitol at "Washing- 
ton, in the hand-writing of Daniel Webster, are these words : " If, 
therefore, it shall be hereafter the will of God that this structure 



CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS SUFFICIENT, ETC. 259 

shall fall from its base, that its foundation be upturned, and this 
deposit brought to the eyes of men, be it then known that on this 
day the Union of the United States of America stands firm, that 
their Constitution still exists unimpaired, and, with all its original 
usefulness and glory, growing every day stronger and stronger in 
the affection of the great body of the American people, and at- 
tracting more and more the admiration of the world." That de- 
posit is hardly ten years old. Daniel Webster has not been gath- 
ered to his fathers ten years, and that stone is rocked by the earth- 
quake of revolution. Those institutions, whose success he sup- 
posed he was announcing to a distant futurity, seem now already 
to be losing their hold on the affections of the people and the re- 
spect of nations abroad. Were he now called on to rewrite that 
solemn proclamation to posterity, he would lower its lofty tone. 
He would say, 

"The Union of the United States of America is now assailed 
and shaken to its foundations; their Constitution has ceased, in a 
great measure, to command the confidence of the people of Amer- 
ica or the admiration of the world, and the people themselves seek 
alter a master." 

The path of a nation in search of a master is broad enough and 
of varied aspect. Nations have sought him in the imperfections 
of their national institutions ; in the madness of civil strife ; at the 
hands of foreign intervention ; in the degeneracy and corruptions 
of their own manners ; in appeals from the ballot-box to the sword 
at the bidding or for the advancement of personal ambition. The 
people of America now exhibit more than one of the symptoms 
of that fatal hunt. One great region is marching in the path of 
Mexico to the overthrow of a government it has ceased to control. 
The other great region is following in that deadly path — uncon- 
sciously perhaps, not so palpably, but not less surely, not less fa- 
tally — by the blind madness with which they throw down every 
barrier liberty has erected against arbitrary power in their reck- 
less eagerness to preserve the integrity of the nation. They sec 
the gulf, and think nothing too precious to fill it. They arc ready 
to lay their liberty a sacrifice on the altar of victory. 

When Daniel Webster died, American liberty looked strong 
and was boastful of its strength ; when President Buchanan left 
the White House, American liberty was like Herod, eaten of 
worms beneath his royal robes, and ready to give up the ghost. 



260 CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS SUFFICIENT 

The foundations of the constitutional edifice were already secretly 
sapped; the mortar was already picked from the stones; and 
when the j udges of the Supreme Court pronounced the Dre"d Scott 
judgment, the very caryatides of the Constitution were seen to 
bend beneath the unusual pressure, and the whole edifice seemed, 
to thoughtful eyes, to rush to its ruin. The sap went on more 
earnestly, more vigorously ; and as the catastrophe approached, all 
the energy and audacity seemed on the side of the assailants ; all 
the doubt, all the hesitation, all the timidity on the side of the de- 
fenders — paralyzed at the awful aspect of the national dissolution. 
Then it was that the enemies of the republic thought their day 
was come ; they rushed openly to the assault of the breach they 
had been so long and so secretly preparing. In their exulting 
confidence they boastfully shouted, 

"York is joined to Boliugbroke, 
And all your northern castles yielded tip, 
And all your southern gentlemen in arras 
Upon his party." 

And the sovereign people thought their power doomed when 
breathless messengers from the South gasped out, 

"White beards have armed their thin and hairless scalps 
Against thy majesty ; and boys with women's voices 
Speak big, and clap their female joints 
In stiff, unwieldy arms against thy crown ; 
Even thy beadsmen learn to bend their bows 
Of double fatal yew against thy state ; 
Yea, distaff women manage rusty bills 
Against thy seat; both young and old rebel." 

Bold men thought the last day of the republic was come. Bad 
men withdrew to seize their part of the dismembered heritage. 
Timid friends gathered round the bed of the dying patient, and 
talked hopefully of peaceful dissolution ; and when rash men 
whispered, even with bated breath, of coercive remedies, they 
were put far off, lest the shock of the suggestion might hasten the 
catastrophe. 

And then an unaccustomed sound echoed over the land — a 
strange event — a new thing under the sun — American arms point- 
ed cannon at American breasts — American shot shattered an 
American fortress — American hands dragged down the standard 
of the republic, and boasted that they first had trailed it in the 
dust. 



FOR REPRESSION OF REBELLION. 261 

That touched a nerve of exquisite sensibility which vibrated 
to the heart of the nation ; and it rose from its bed of death, and 
cast off its premature grave-clothes, and challenged its right to 
be a nation of history. From the Pacific to the Atlantic, liv- 
ing men stretched forth eager hands for arms to defend the re- 
public. 

And then the people passed from atomy to paroxysm in a day. 
Action — action was the cry ! 

The people were summoned to action — action upon a new the- 
atre — action upon new principles and for new purposes — action 
on new paths, different from the recognized and used paths over 
which the American people had in this generation trodden — ac- 
tion at the bidding of one stern and irresistible impulse that 
seemed for an instant — nay, for months — to blind the American 
people, and make them forget the salutary principles of the Con- 
stitution, which was framed after the experience of one revolution, 
and is competent to carry the nation through another revolution. 
They supposed, because they had not hitherto been called to deal 
with the great question of the suppression of insurrection — the 
guarantee of republican government to the States — the assertion 
of the supreme authority of the United States • — they supposed 
thatjaws wj^re meant for times of peace, that constitutions were 
only to be obeyed in courts of law — that now fury mi ght mi nister 
arms, that wrath might be the measure as well as the instigation 
to what is allowable to might. The maxims of the hour, urged 
by the press and the people on those in power, were, " Give them 
as good as they send — do as they do — make those acts against 
which you protest the measure of your conduct — we can not af- 
ford the protection of the- laws to traitors — the laws are silent in 
the midst of arms — necessity is above all law — the safety of the 
people is the only law." And these maxims, unheard of before 
as American law, unheard of before upon American hustings, un- 
heard of in the councils of legislation — I need not say never 
dreamed of in the courts of justice — these maxims have in a great 
measure ruled the government in its dealing with the existing 
troubles — ruled the government, in a great measure, in the modes 
in which it has attempted to deal with the great and terrible re- 
bellion that we are called upon to suppress — ruled it, not at its 
own suggestion or inspiration — not against the will of the people; 
but the people leading the government on, urging it on, prompt- 



262 CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS SUFFICIENT 

ing it, rejoicing over every arbitrary act, calling for more vigorous 
measures, when the vigor had already, in more than one instance, 
overstepped the bounds of law ; seeing nothing but the enemy 
before it, and supposing that enemies of law might be subdued by 
disregard of the fundamental principles of the government. I do 
not think I have overstated the case. 

■Certainly it is not my disposition to overstate the case. I do 
not know any one who is more interested — no one here, certainly, 
is so much interested — in the suppression of this rebellion as I am 
personally. You see the conflagration from the distance ; it blis- 
ters me at my side. (Applause.) You can survive the integrity 
of the nation ; we in Maryland would live on the side of a gulf, 
perpetually tending to plunge into its depths. It is for us life and 
liberty — it is for you greatness, strength, and prosperity. 

If you are interested, still more am I ; if illegal measures are 
necessary for salvation, I am more tempted than you to resort to 
them ; and yet I desire to say that there is no circumstance con- 
nected with all the difficulties we are called upon to deal with — 
nothing, in my sight, so threatening in the future — nothing which 
I find myself so unable satisfactorily to contemplate, as the temper 
of the public mind in dealing with this great rebellion. Not that 
I have any tenderness for the parricidal hands that have lifted 
weapons against the heart of the nation — let them perish ! (Ap- 
plause.) But in their grave I do not wish to see American lib- 
erty buried. It is time that the energy of the nation, having now 
been aroused, her embattled hosts lining the whole border, flaming 
with the conflict, by whose light we read that the nation will not 
die a dog's death and will not perish of rottenness off the face of 
the earth — it becomes us now to turn our eyes to the principles 
upon which the contest is to be waged — to hold those in author- 
ity responsible, not merely for energy, but for legality and consti- 
tutionality — to silence the sneer with which men are met when 
they recall their rulers to the limits of law and the Constitution. 
Let them understand that the American government will not be 
so degraded in the eyes of history as to be driven to the necessity 
of inaugurating revolution for the purpose of suppressing insur- 
rection. (Applause.) 

They who speak about extraordinary methods — of the necessity 
of usurpation — of the necessity of neglecting the " technicalities of 
law," as they politely term them — the necessity of departing from 



FOR REPRESSION OF REBELLION. 263 

all " red-tapeism," which is the ordinary phrase to describe now 
the regular operations of the government, conducted by wise men 
— these men must be taught (and it is for gentlemen like you to 
teach them) that it does not prove a man is disloyal because he 
thinks the Constitution better than they do, not only powerful in 
peace, but powerful in war; that its a>gis is notonly so broad as 
to protect the people in times of peace, but fri the midst of civil 
war the surest protection; in the face of national disaster, the 
surest refuge. (Cheers.) 

Let us review some of the measures which have been resorted 
to by the government in the name of the suppression of the re- 
bellion, and with the accord of the people, and see where in six 
months we have drifted before the storm of war. If it is usurpa- 
tion, it is usurpation against a willing people. If it is illegal, it is 
illegality prompted by the people. But it is equally certain that 
the acclaim of the people is the most dangerous symptom. 

We have seen in the midst of the American republic, in the 
midst of the nineteenth century, after more than eighty years of 
republican rule, under a plainly-written Constitution — we have 
seen a republican administration assume the right to declare and 
execute martial law. We have seen a military commander in 
charge of a great and important district, within two months, I be- 
lieve, after Congress had adjourned, issue a proclamation inaugu- 
rating, formally, martial law over two thirds of the State of Mis- 
souri — threatening with death, at the dictation of a drum-head 
court-martial, any one caught in arms within the district pre- 
scribed by his will. We have seen him assume the right to dis- 
regard the act of Congress ere the ink was fairly dry upon the 
parchment, and to confiscate property which Congress, by omit- 
ting, said could not be confiscated. We have seen (and those who 
have seen them must have laughed) deeds of manumission signed 
" John C. Fremont, Major General Commanding." (Applause and 
hisses. A cry, "Three cheers for Fremont!" and cries "for 
shame !") 

Free speech exists where I speak. (Tremendous applause.) 

I have seen tempestuous assemblies before in my day. Nay, 
more, I have seen, likewise, statements that three or four freemen 
of America have been convicted before a court-martial in the State 
of Missouri, presided over by a colonel of Illinois volunteers — 
that is the judicial tribunal — convicted of being in arms against 



264 CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS SUFFICIENT 

the United States — that is treason — and sentenced to hard labor 
during the war. 

The President, with the advice of the chief law officer of the 
government — a gentleman for whom I entertain, personally and 
politically, the very highest regard — has, under the pressure of 
the emergency of the times, asserted a right in the President, and 
the President has acted upon it in various instances, to suspend 
the writ of habeas corpus. (Applause.) And under this usurped 
power the President has arrested or allowed to be arrested many 
freemen who were not in arms, and had not been in arms, against 
the United States, and therefore were not fit objects of the mili- 
tary power vested in the President by Congress ; has refused to 
submit the causes of their arrest to the judicial tribunal, even in 
New York, and has incarcerated.them in fortresses that they might 
be, out of the way of process. 

We have seen a judge of the highest court of record in the Dis- 
trict of Columbia held prisoner in his house, with a soldier march- 
ing up and down before the door, with bayonet on his shoulder. 
(Cries of " Serve him right! serve him right!") 

We have not yet reached the question whether it has served 
him right or not. (Applause.) About the fact there is no doubt ; 
that there was no sworn statement against him, there is no doubt; 
that the ordinary formalities of law were not pursued, there is no 
doubt. If he was guilty, let him be punished by law ; if he was 
bearing arms, or about to bear arms, let it be known, and the world 
will justify the act. (Applause.) 

We have seen likewise (and when we remember that it is the 
middle of the nineteenth century we may very well be startled at 
the very reference), we have seen at least one newspaper — prob- 
ably more than one newspaper — stopped because of the character 
of its articles. We have seen more than one newspaper — (they 
do not express my sentiments) — we have seen more than one 
newspaper excluded from the benefit of the mails without author- 
ity of law. 

We have seen a provost-marshal — the police-officer of a camp — 
inaugurate a civil court in Alexandria, Va., and (I presume I ad- 
dress not a few of the mercantile gentlemen of New York), if the 
papers have not again misled me, I think I saw a few days ago 
that the Chamber of Commerce had suggested to the President 
that he should vest authority in the provost-marshal to continue 



FOR REPRESSION OF REBELLION. 265 

that illegal and usurped jurisdiction. (Cries of " Good," and ap- 
plause.) 

We have seen executed — as nothing of the kind has been exe- 
cuted in any despotic country of Europe, and with a completeness 
and precision, secrecy and dispatch, that would have done honor 
to the chief of police of France — the seizure #f all the telegrams 
in all the telegraph offices, from one end to the other of the 
American republic, I believe, in one day. (Loud applause.) 

We have seen, I believe, without any authority of law — we 
have seen an order from the Secretary of State saying that no 
man shall leave the United States without a passport — that is, by 
his leave. (Renewed applause.) 

Now these things are not cast in the teeth of any body, nor 
stated for the purpose of crimination. I use them historically ; I 
use them for the lesson they teach ; I use them to bring before 
you, men of America, where you this day stand after your repub- 
lican government has been in full and blessed operation for over 
eighty years. 

These measures have been executed without any authority of 
law. Some of them might have been authorized by Congress; but M 
Congress had just adjourned without having authorized them. 

Over these measures of the executive there is a strange agree- 
ment between the friends and the enemies of the government. 

The enemies of the United States have taken the Constitution 
under their special protection, the more easily to destroy it. They 
deny the constitutionality of every measure for the suppression of 
the insurrection, and confound the arbitrary and the legal in one 
indiscriminate outcry against usurpation and oppression. 

The friends of the government apparently agree with them in 
their denial of the sufficiency of the Constitution for the crisis, and 
propose to eke out its omissions by the law of necessity. 

I agree with neither of them. Both are wrong, and either view 
is equally fatal to the existence of the government. 

The Constitution docs vest in Congress adequate power to sup- 
press every insurrection. 

The Constitution does not vest in Congress or the President ar- 
bitrary or unlimited power for that or any other purpose. Now, 
TFthe constitutional powers of the government are not sufficient for 
the suppression of the rebellion — I mean the constitutional powers 
of the government, not construed by the standard of South Caro- 



266 CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS SUFFICIENT 

lina, but measured by the standard of Daniel Webster, measured 
by the standard of Henry Clay (applause), measured by the stand- 
ard of Abraham Lincoln, who differs in nothing from either of 
those great men (applause) — if the Constitution of the United 
States does not confer power upon the government to deal with 
a great rebellion l>ke this, then, gentlemen, I wish you to draw 
your conclusion. Mine is, that the government of George Wash- 
ington has failed! (Hisses, and cries of "No!") If the govern- 
ment that he founded can not deal with the events before it, it is 
not an inference of logic, it is the verdict of history, it has failed. 
(Hisses.) And hissing don't change the verdict. (Laughter.) Or 
else the hiss is to be interpreted in this sense — that the govern- 
ment has not failed, although it does not afford power to deal with 
the rebellion, which yet it is its duty to suppress. That argument 
is worthy of a hiss ! I say, gentlemen, if the Constitution does 
not furnish these powers, then the people of the United States are 
in the face of another revolution. If you can not find, within the 
limits of the law written down, the mode and method by which 
you arc to stamp out this rebellion, by what law is the President 
to be guided ? 

A Voice, The law of self-preservation. 

Mr. Davis. That is the law of Louis Napoleon. 

A Voice. The law of military power. 

Mr. Davis. Yes, the law of Julius Ctesar — the law of the master 
over the slave. I do not know what you think of George Wash- 
ington, but I shall not scandalize his memory by such a suggestion 
until, with all the lights before me, I shall have read the law he 
proposed for the government of the republic, and sec, with the 
light of experience, the rulings of the courts, the opinions of great 
men, and the necessities of national life, whether we can not find 
on the face of the Constitution, without making ourselves slaves 
(for it is to be a slave to be bound to obey the will of any body 
beyond the limits of law), a republican way to preserve at once 
the nation and the liberties of the people. (Applause.) 

And I say, in the first place, that martial law, whatever else is 
allowed — and while, in my judgment, the authority vested in the 
United States, applied in its proper forms and described by its con- 
stitutional language, is ample— I say that martial law, in any sense 
in which it is known to the history of the world, is something 
which is excluded from our system, and which we ourselves and 



FOR REPRESSION OF REBELLION. 267 

our forefathers have been careful to exclude, because an arbitrary 
exercise of discretion could not be safely vested any where in our 
government. Why, what is martial law ? The people are all of 
them crying out for martial law. If they mean the direction of 
military power against armed opposition — the direction of the 
military power to disperse military resistance — why don't they 
use the language of the Constitution, and speak of " calling out 
the militia to suppress the insurrection?" But if they use the 
words "martial law," men of the sword will interpret it in the 
only sense in which it is known to the history of the world ; and 
Wellington has defined it, "It is the will of the commander-in- 
chief." Does the President, of his will, possess the power to de- 
clare, to inaugurate, or to enact martial law? Unless it is the 
perpetual law of the republic, it can not be enacted by him, nor 
declared by him, nor declared by any body that he may authorize 
to declare it, because the Constitution says — and this is a war for 
the Constitution as well as for the Union — the Constitution says 
that " all legislative power herein granted is vested in Congress." 
Then the President can not proclaim it. Can Congress proclaim 
it? "'"Why, what is martial law ? Mere will, limited by no defini- 
tion — controlled by nothing except the will of the commander-in- 
chief — his discretion under the circumstances — his determination 
to allow and to forbid any thing — the right to judge people by 
court-martial— the right to order men to be shot down by a file 
of soldiers for wearing a red and white cravat — the right to dis- 
regard the limits of the Constitution. It is blind fate. It is en- 
acted at the dictation of necessity, and necessity owns no law. It 
is proclaimed in the name of the public safety — it is the annihila- 
tion of every guarantee of the public liberty. With us our Con- 
stitution, framed by George Washington, is the great safeguard 
of the country. The safety of the people is the supreme law ; 
but that Constitution is the safety of the people — the Constitution 
is that supreme law. Above it there is no necessity, beyond it 
there is no law, outside of it there is no security. That Constitu- 
tion does not use the word martial law. It does not vest author- 
ity to declare martial law any where, in any body, under any cir- 
cumstances. It professes to provide for every necessity of na- 
tional life, and it forbids martial law; for it forbids arbitrary tri- 
als, it forbids any conviction for crime but by a jury, any trial 
but before the judges and courts it has provided, yet martial law 



268 CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS SUFFICIENT 

has tried freemen for treason by a court-martial. It forbids arbi- 
trary confiscations of property, yet martial law has already exe- 
cuted arbitrary confiscations. It forbids arbitrary invasions of 
the right of personal freedom, yet men who had offended against 
no law now are held by martial law, and in spite of the law of 
the land. 

Yet the Constitution has not overlooked grave crises such as 
that we are now passing through. It provides, under proper 
sanctions and with proper limitations, for such emergencies ; but 
it carefully forbids this arbitrary discretion, which British freemen 
found incompatible with their safety in the hands of the king, and 
which our fathers knew would he fatal to our liberty in the hands 
of the President, and too dangerous to be intrusted even to the 
discretion of Congress. They knew what martial law was, for 
they rebelled against it as their English ancestors had. 
X Martial law is not now for the first time supposed to be neces- 
sary ; it has been often imposed under that pretext in the old 
home of liberty, and there it has been repealed by arms and for- 
bidden by laws written in royal blood. Martial law had been 
thought necessary to prevent the dispersion of papal bulls or trai- 
torous libels against the queen. It had been thought necessary 
for the suppression of sundry great unlawful assemblies, that such 
notable rebellious persons be speedily suppressed by execution 
of death, according to the justice of martial law; and Charles I. 
had thought it necessary for his purposes to issue commissions to 
try not only soldiers, but other dissolute persons who might com- 
mit murder or other outrage or misdemeanor whatever — -just as 
Fremont thought it necessary for the quiet of Missouri to sup- 
press such outrages — by the justice of martial law. But the Com- 
mons of England, by the Petition of Eight, compelled the revoca- 
tion of such commissions, and forbade them for the future, because 
no man ought to be "judged to death, but by the laws established 
in the realm." And our fathers were fresh in this historjr when 
they formed our Constitution, and incorporated among its solemn 
enactments these great prohibitions of arbitrary power which is 
the spirit of martial law. 

The Commons of England had prohibited to the crown the arbi- 
trary right to seize the property of the subject, or withdraw his 
personal liberty from the cognizance of the courts even on a com- 
mitment by the special command of the king, or to try him by 



FOR REPRESSION OF REBELLION. 2 GO 

commission of martial law, contrary to the laws of the land ; and 
our fathers took from that petition their great safeguards, and 
placed them beyond and above even the legislative will of Con- 
gress. 

The Constitution declares that the "judicial power shall be 
vested in our Supreme Court, or in such inferior courts as Con- 
gress may ordain." 

The President, then, can't establish courts-martial. 

" The judges of both the Supreme and inferior courts shall hold 
their offices during good behavior." L/ 

Neither Congress nor the President, then, can make a military 
officer a judge during will, nor a provost-marshal a civil court. 

" The judicial power shall extend to all cases under the Consti- 
tution and laws." 

The courts of law, therefore, alone can take cognizance of any 
crime against the United States. 

" The trial of all crimes, except in case of impeachment, shall 
be by jury." 

An Illinois colonel can not, therefore, try any one for any 
crime. 

" No one shall be held to answer for a capital or otherwise in- 
famous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand 
jury, except in cases arising in the land and naval service" 

A man can not then be tried by any court-martial, unless a sol- 
dier or sailor ; and Congress is especially authorized to make rules 
for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces ; 
and but for this, no soldier could be tried otherwise than by a 
court of law. 

"Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech 
or of the press." 

Even Congress is prohibited from suppressing any newspaper ; 
how can the executive claim the right ? 

The fathers of the Constitution assumed that the habeas corpus 
would protect our liberties ; but they were unwilling to leave that 
to the discretion of Congress, and they therefore made it perpetual 
by prohibiting its suspension even, except when in cases of rebel- 
lion or invasion the public safety may require it. 

Congress has not suspended it ; it is therefore the right of every 
man confined contrary to law. 

It is perhaps to be regretted that Congress did not at its late 



270 CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS SUFFICIENT 

session suspend that writ in a portion of the United States, and 
give the President a wider power of arrest than the laws now 
a ll ow — subject to such safeguards as might protect innocent peo- 
ple from vexatious, or mistaken, or malicious arrests ; but Con- 
gress thought otherwise, and that confined the President to the 
limits of the military power conferred on him for the suppression 
of "the rebellion, and that extends only to persons in arms, or 
those actively aiding and abetting them against the government. 
Such persons are liable to arrest by military authority under the 
law of Congress. Every one else is amenable only to the judicial 
tribunals and under judicial forms, y 

These provisions exclude martial law and all arbitrary discre- 
tion — all exceptional and temporary tribunals— all executive 
power over the liberty of the citizen. 

If the government can not meet the necessities of the time with- 
out transcending these limits, then American republicanism has 
failed. 

If a discretionary power over the liberty of the citizen, or a 
right to try him by exceptional tribunals is to be tolerated, then 
we are on the eve of a more dangerous revolution than the one 
we have undertaken to suppress. 

We have abandoned the attempt to reconcile liberty with a gov- 
ernment of law, national existence with the supremacy of law ; we 
have been driven to invoke the principle of executive discretion 
in the last resort, and at its will to suspend every guarantee writ- 
ten down in the Constitution to protect the liberty of the indi- 
vidual against executive power. 

If it were clear that the national existence demands this sacri- 
fice, while it might be yielded, it would be not the less certain 
that our system of government has failed. 

But if it be not so demanded, and yet the people from negli- 
gence, or indolence, or weariness of the perpetual demands on 
their time and attention for the actual conduct of the government 
by law and on its own principles, tolerate or invite these intru- 
sions of arbitrary will on the domains of law — whether those in- 
trusions result from the indifference of those in power, or their 
obedience to popular clamor, then it is not less certain that our 
government has failed in fact — failed because the people lacked 
republican spirit, energy, and vigilance. 

And if this system of law have failed, there is but one alterna- 



FOR REPRESSION OF REBELLION. -271 

tive. We pass from the constitutional freedom of America to 
the democratic despotism of France. To that all free government 
tends in this age. Only England and the United States have 
avoided it of all modern free nations, and they have done so be- 
cause their liberty was organized in institutions approved by ex- 
perience, improved by reason, and. adhered, to by inveterate habit 
and national pride. Those institutions exclude every element of 
arbitrary power, and define by law the rights and duties of every 
man ; and when those laws are abandoned, we become as France 
is. Necessity will be the supreme law — the President its supreme 
interpreter — its only rule his will — his only limit what he thinks 
the people will bear. He will still speak in their name, but he 
will not execute their written will, but what he divines to be 
theirs. 

This is democratic government, but it is not American republic- 
anism. It is the system now being inaugurated by the connivance 
or the blindness of the people. 

"We are treading the path of the Eoman republic, the history of 
whose freedom is unconsciously summed up in a single paragraph 
of Justinian's Institutes, defining the sources of Koman law. Its 
whole history is there from the day of its vigor and vigilance, 
when the law was the only rule of action, down to its day of las- 
situde and corrurjtion, when the weary people had accepted the 
will of the prince as their only law. 

Lex est quod popidus Romanus, senatorio magistratu interrogante, 
veluti consule, constituebat. 

Plebiscitum est quod Plebs, plebeio magistratu interrogante, veluti 
Tribuno, constituebat. 

Senatus consultum est quod senatus jubet atque constituit. Nam- 
quian auctus est populus Romanus in eum modum ut difficile esset in 
unum eum convocari legis sanciendoz causa, cequm visum est Sena- 
tus VICE POPULI CONSULI. 

Sed et quod Principi placuit legis liabet vigorem, cum LEGE REGIA, 
quae de ejus imperio lata est, Populus Romanus ei et in eum omne 
imperium suum et potestatem CONCESSIT ! ! 

"We have taken our first steps in this downward road. The 
last six months have laid up a mass of dangerous precedents for 
future ambition. And after your and my day, when our children 
shall have inherited the soil without the institutions of their 
fathers — when it shall have become the settled conviction that the 



272 % CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS SUFFICIENT 

Constitution is made for times of peace, that necessity is para- 
mount to its prohibitions, that the President's discretion is the 
judge of the necessity and of the measures required to meet it, 
the learned jurist of some American Justinian will enumerate as 
of the past the old sources of the law of the republic — the Consti- 
tution and the laws passed in pursuance thereof, by Congress — 
but will tell us that the frequent necessities of the case, the de- 
fects of the written law, the inconvenience of consulting Congress 
— the greater convenience of presidential rescripts, epistles, edicts 
made for the emergency, in the confidence that the people will 
approve them — these have become the settled substitutes for con- 
stitutional legislation ; and he will close his summary by those 
significant words: 

"Sed id quod Presidenti phcuil leg is habel vigorcm ! i '" 

We are taking our first steps toward that dark cavern into 
which the steps of all free nations before us have strayed, and 
from which only a few have ever returned, and they scared by 
the fires of revolution and scarred by the chains of their servi- 
tude. 

These dire calamities we may avoid if we resolutely adhere to 
the limits of the Constitution. 

Let us appreciate the vast difficulties with which the adminis- 
tration is called to struggle; let us not judge harshly their errors; 
let us accord them a generous confidence ; but let us require them 
to grapple with the difficulties according to law — forbid their 
recurrence to discretionary devices — rigidly repel usurpation un- 
der any pretext, at any instigation, even that of the people them- 
selves. 

Consistently with our Constitution there can be no. such thing 
as martial law. 

lias the Constitution, then, omitted or excluded any thing nec- 
essary to carry the republic through this great crisis ? 

Let us turn to its arsenal, and survey its arms. 

We make the war in the name of the Constitution ; that Con- 
stitution provides" that Congress shall guarantee to each State of 
the Union a republican form of government. Wicked men in 
all the seceded States have flown in the face of that great funda- 
mental law, and violated the fundamental principle of all repub- 
lican government, and inaugurated governments in defiance of the 
supreme law of the land. It is the case in which the Congress 



FOR REPRESSION OF REBELLION. 278 

of the United States — not by the law of necessity, not by the law 
of self-preservation, not for the safety of the people, not because 
the President or the people think it advisable, but according to 
the written law of the land — are bound to intervene with all their 
powers of every kind, and guarantee to the people of those States, 
loyal or rebel, a republican government, controlling the people 
under the forms of law ; and Chief Justice Taney and the Supreme 
Court have told us so. 

" Unquestionably," they say, " a military government estab- 
lished as the permanent government of a State would not be a re- 
publican government, and it would be the duty of Congress to 
overthrow- it." 

It is therefore the duty of Congress now to overthrow the 
usurping governments in ten rebellious States. And how should 
it be done? Congress is vested with power to call forth the mil- 
itia' to execute the laws of the Union and to suppress insurrec- 
tion, as well as to repel invasion. The critical gentlemen who im- 
peach the authority of the government to use force, acutely dis- 
tinguish between the rebellion in the Southern States and an in- 
surrection. That is done under the authority of State sovereignty ; 
it is done at the bidding of sovereigns, and therefore it is not in- 
surrection. The Constitution of the United States, and all laws 
made in pursuance thereof, arc the supreme law of the land, any 
thing in the Constitution or the laws of any State to the contrary' 
notwithstanding. Let them be as sovereign as they please, when 
they pass an ordinance of secession it falls before that sovereign 
clause of the Constitution, and is so much waste paper. (Ap- 
plause.) Their laws arc the acts of a mob, transcending the lim- 
its of their power, and flying in the face of the supreme govern- 
ment of the land. If that be supreme, they arc subordinate. If 
Congress is to declare the supreme law, the Ordinance of Seces- 
sion is an inferior law. If the judges arc to be bound by the laws 
of Congress, any thing in the Constitution or laws of the States to 
the contrary notwithstanding, then the judges are bound to annul 
and disregard the Ordinance of Secession, and Congress is bound 
to interfere the moment a State attempts to override the supreme 
law of the republic. And how? By authorizing the President 
to use the military power of the republic to compel the submission 
of its enemies, and by such reasonable penalties and forfeitures as 
will not exasperate and indurate the hostile population. The 

S 



274 CONSTITUTIONAL TOWERS SUFFICIENT 

President, of himself, Las no power to do any thing. lie is the 
executor of the laws. He has authority to command the army 
when the army exists, but it can only exist by the law of Con- 
' gross. He is directed to sec that the laws be faithfully executed, 
but he can execute no law until it exists. Until the laws give 
him authority to act, he has just as much power as you or I. He 
is 'not our master. lie has no discretion vested in him. He is 
bound by the limitations of the law. What that allows him to 
do, he can do ; what it docs not allow him to do, he can not do. 
That is the principle of our republican government. That is the 
example set by Washington. lie was compelled to suppress the 
Whisky Insurrection, and he did it in spite of the imperfection of 
the law, but according to law; yet there arc some people who 
think that George Washington did not make a government that 
would conduct us through an insurrection. The law of 1795 was 
passed in his administration and at his instance, he having found 
. in the Whisky Rebellion in Pennsylvania that the preceding laws 
upon the statute-book were inadequate for the purpose. Has any 
historical gentleman here present ever heard that Washington 
thought the inadequacy of the law a sufficient reason for usurping 
a power which the Constitution did not grant? No; he did the 
best he could. He bewailed the inefficiency of the existing law, 
but he did not venture to supply it by the law of the public safe- 
ty, by his own ideas of the public necessity, by usurpation. There 
would have been no difficulty then, if usurpation could always 
supply a deficiency. But he, the great Father and founder of the 
Constitution, went to the Senate and House of Eepresentatives, 
and laid before them, in his formal message, the deficiency of the 
law under which he had been obliged to struggle with the rebel- 
lion which then threatened the existence of the national republic 
as much as this threatens its existence, and begged them to re- 
lieve his successors from the embarrassment to which he had been 
subjected. And they did it. They who impeach Mr. Lincoln 
for usurpation shut their eyes to that law. They who say that 
the government has no legal authority to use military power to 
suppress the rebellion, overlook that law. I read to-day the mes- 
sage of the self-styled President of the Confederate States, in which 
he audaciously says that the President has made war upon them 
without the authority of Congress. And that very man, when he 
was Secretary of War, under that very law of 1795, organized 
those infernal proceedings in Kansas. 



FOR RECESSION OF REBELLION. 275 

What has Congress done? If it has not done enough, it will 
meet in the course of a few days, and may do more. If it has 
omitted important measures, it can supply deficiencies. But what 
it has authorized up to this time is the limit of what it is allow- 
able for the executive power to do. It has passed a law confisca- 
ting part of the property of rebels, and therefore nobody has the 
right to confiscate all their property. Be it right or wrong, wise 
or unwise, it is not in the law, and therefore it is forbidden. It 
has authorized, and in my judgment wisely, the confiscation of 
property used to promote rebellion, and there it stops — there the 
President is bound to stop — there the military commanders are 
bound to stop, whether on a foraging party or otherwise. That 
is the impassable limit of their power. It has enacted that there 
shall be a blockade of the Southern coast, a cessation of commer- 
cial intercourse. That is the greatest stretch of power that Con- 
gress has undertaken to exercise touching this subject. In my 
judgment, it is within its full competency. In my judgment, it 
was necessary to the accomplishment of the great purpose of pre- 
venting military and other supplies from reaching men in arms. 
It doubtless bears hardly on the loyal men of the South, who 
swarm there, as I am proud to know, by thousands, but disarmed, 
and therefore powerless. (Applause.) And I know that, while 
they feel the privations, they submit cheerfully to the restriction, 
for over the glare of the conflagration they still see the dawn of 
the coming day of liberty. (Applause.) These are two things 
that Congress has done. What else has it done? Placed a mag- 
nificent army at the disposal of the President of the United 
States, charged to guarantee a republican government to those 
who now no longer know its blessings, and to extinguish the last 
spark of rebellion. 

Is that army an idle pageant — a holiday parade, or may it smite 
with the sword it bears ? 

The law is the only criterion ; the law assembles it — the law 
defines its rights and dlities. 

Obedience to the Constitution and laws is all the government has 
a right to demand. 

If individuals refuse obedience, the courts, and juries, and mar- 
shals will compel it. 

If numbers combine to resist, the law vests the marshal with 
the right to summon the power of the county to dispel the array. 






276 CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS SUFFICIENT 

But when the unlawful combination swells into insurrection, 
and overmatches and defies the marshal and his powers, is the 
government to submit? When the ordinary civil, judicial, and 
legal modes of proceeding have failed, the enemies of the govern- 
ment say that it must stand with its hands by its side and see it- 
self torn limbless. But does the law say that because the courts 
cart render no assistance they can not be opened ? On the con- 
trary, when they have been closed, then the law lifts the banner 
of the republic, draws the sword, and, still waiting and giving its 
erring children time for repentance, forbids the use of the drawn 
sword till the President shall have issued his proclamation direct- 
ing- the unlawful combinations — not seceded States, but unlawful 
combinations of men too strong to be dispersed by the marshal — 
to go to their respective homes. And that Abraham Lincoln did. 
(Applause.) And when they did not go to their respective homes, 
when all the stages of republican forbearance had been passed, 
when all the forms of law had been duly invoked, and the last 
remedy was all that remained, he solemnly put forth his procla- 
mation, and by the written law of the land called the children of 
the republic to its defense — and they answered by the million. 
(Applause.) Now, what are they charged to do ? What is the 
reason that military force is allowed at all? Because the civil 
process has been overborne. What is the purpose of the military 
force ? To disperse armed opposition, that arrests the progress of 
the marshal, that closes the court of justice, silences the judge on 
the bench, and renders impossible the ordinary and peaceful en- 
forcement of the law. And what do you want the army to do ? 
To hunt peaceful people, quietly residing at home, whom a mar- 
shal with a writ can arrest? Are six hundred thousand men, 
your sons and brothers, in arms for that ? How wretchedly inad- 
equate is the cause ! For what, then ! It is to scatter the array 
of armed men ; it is to break down a combination of armed force 
— to break the military power arrayed against the republic. When 
that is broken, what stands between the marshal and the person 
that the law would punish ? The right to draw the sword comes 
from the fact that the law is arrested. The sword must go into 
its scabbard when the law no longer meets with opposition beyond 
the power of the marshal to disperse it. This is not martial law ; 
it is the solemn written law of the republic that armed men shall 
meet armed men — that they who lift the banner of rebellion shall 



FOR REPRESSION OF REBELLION. 277 

be met by the banner of the republic — that they who appeal to 
arms shall be met in arms. And then when they quote to you, 
as they do, the language of the Constitution, that no person shall 
be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, 
I reply that against those in arms against the government the 
bayonet is the process of law. (Applause.) A bullet speeds on 
its mission just as legally as the marshal with his writ. (Ap- 
plause.) The order to fire on men arrayed against the govern- 
ment is as much the language of the Constitution of the United 
States as the order of the marshal to arrest the man named in his 
process. (Applause.) Let them disperse if they do not wish to 
be dispersed, and if they will not disperse when commanded, then 
they draw the fire of the government — they call down its thunder 
upon their heads — they necessitate an appeal to the sword. Let 
them who draw it perish by it. (Applause.) Why talk about 
that word which is unheard of in republican lands, but is the home 
companion of the despots of Europe — martial law ; a state of siege 
— the will of the commander — the necessity of dooming people to 
death after they have been arrested by the military authority, 
because vengeance can not wait the lagging process of trial? 
When the military array is dispersed, they no longer present op- 
position to the enforcement of the laws ; the necessity of the mili- 
tary force ceases with the dispersion ; the right to use it ceases 
with the necessity ; the necessity is limited by the language of 
the law to combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the or- 
dinary processes of law. That is the true, legal, and constitutional 
position. Is it not better to keep to the statute-book and the 
Constitution, than to insult the memory of Washington by suppo- 
sing that the machinery of his government has failed on its first 
trial ? 

And when the army is assembled, what may it rightfully do ? 
Is it subject to the caprice of private owners for ground to en- 
camp on, for positions to fortify, for fields to fight on ? Must it 
confine its march to the public highways? stop to pay toll? 
(Laughter.) Ask leave to trespass on a gentleman's ground be- 
fore it ventures to deploy against an advancing foe? Is it to as- 
sess damages for treading down grass before it can throw up a 
breastwork to protect it from an advancing foe? If the Legisla- 
ture repeal, or the company surrender the charter for the road, is 
the force stationary, or driven to violate the right of property 



278 CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS SUFFICIENT 

which the Constitution so formally guarantees? So argue the 
enemies of the republic who profess to be the friends of the Con- 
stitution, but their argument displays their ignorance only. 
i/ The same right which takes land for a railway track against the 
owner's will subjects the whole territory to the burden of war at 
the will of the military authority. It is not a violation of a pri- 
vate right — it is the assertion of the right of eminent domain over 
the national territory. Is the authority to take a man's prop- 
erty for a railway more imperative than that which allows the 
government to defend itself against military power? Before the 
supreme right of the government to wage war — foreign or domes- 
tic — State lines arc obliterated (applause), every division of pri- 
vate property is obliterated, every individual right is subordina- 
ted. It is the right of eminent domain of the republic, asserted 
in time of war by the highest political authority, the Constitution 
of the United States. The right to use military force granted in 
the Constitution must find its interpretation in the laws of tactics 
and strategy, of projectiles and defenses against them, the formal 
evolutions of troops on the march and on the battle-field, for these 
things arc war; these things arc the employment of military force; 
these things arc what they meant who framed the Constitution. 
Every political authority so construes the Constitution, and the 
judicial agrees with the political department of the government. 
The Supreme Court, in sustaining the appeal to arms by Rhode 
Island, said, "It was a state of war, and the established govern- 
ment resorted to the rights and usages of war to maintain itself, 
and to overcome the unlawful opposition." 

The same principle vests a military commander with the right 
to seize personal property for the use of the government on sud- 
den and pressing emergencies, when recourse can not be had to 
public supplies — a right which Butler exercised when he seized 
the Annapolis railway. 

He may destroy propertjr to prevent it falling into the enemy's 
hands, even when he could not take it for his own use. 

But beyond these and the like cases, private property of the 
citizen, loyal or disloyal, is as sacred in civil war as in foreign 
war or in peace. Rebellion gives no rights of robbery ; but Con- 
gress may legalize confiscation — it is not a right of war, it is a 
penalty attached to crime. 

But the right to seize and hold persons in arms, or aiding and 



FOR REPRESSION OF REBELLION. 279 

abetting them, is a right involved in the right to use military 
force. On that the political authority and the judicial authority 
agree. 

"In that state of things," say the Supreme Court (in a state of 
civil war), " the officers engaged in its military service might law- 
fully arrest any one who, from the information before them, they 
had reasonable grounds to believe tvas engaged in the insurrection. 1 ' 1 

But when arrested, is he to be discharged at the bidding of any 
judge on a habeas corpus? and can that be prevented only by ad- 
mitting the President's right to suspend it? On whom docs the 
Constitution confer the right to suspend it? War does not sus- 
pend it. Can the President? Blackstone says that in England it 
is suspended only by act of Parliament. The writ of liabeas corpus, 
so far as it is applicable, is issued under the language of the stat- 
ute, and as long as the act is on the statute-book, there is no power 
in the United States that can arrest the progress of the writ, ex- 
cept in Congress, which may repeal or suspend the privilege for 
the time being. Where do they get the authority? If it were 
not prohibited therein specifically, it would result from their right 
to repeal a statute which they had enacted. You need go no 
farther than that. But the Constitution was careful to secure to 
us the right to the writ paramount to the will of Congress, except 
in cases of invasion and rebellion, where the public safety might 
require its suspension. When, therefore, those circumstances oc- 
cur, that writ ought to be suspended. In my judgment, it was a 
serious oversight or neglect in Congress at the last session not to 
have suspended it in some parts of the United States, and in re- 
spect of some classes of persons. They did not do it ; that is their 
fault. But that docs not vest any right to supply their omission 
in the head of the executive department of the government. On 
this great topic the bar of the United States has been smitten with 
barrenness or vertigo. Only one discussion of it worthy of the 
subject and the bar has met my eye, and that was from the justly 
distinguished Professor Parker, of Harvard University. It is 
greatly to be regretted that so distinguished a jurist should have 
dropped an ambiguous doubt of the President's right to suspend 
the writ — that is, to repeal an act of Congress !X Blackstone denies 
the right to the crown; Story confines the right to Congress. 
But no one has quoted the solemn judgment of John Marshall — 
a man of some repute in his day, and not entirely without weight 



280 CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS SUFFICIENT 

among men in our times — respecting the Constitution, which he 
consolidated on the foundations of Washington. The writ was 
moved for in behalf of Bolman and Swartwout — arrested by a 
military officer at New Orleans, brought to the District of Colum- 
bia, and there, by President Jefferson, delivered to the court, and 
committed for trial for treason. The right of the court to award 
the writ was denied, and, after argument, the court, by John Mar- 
shall, thus delivered the judgment on the authority to suspend 
the writ: 

"If at any time the public safety should require the suspension 
of the powers vested by this act in the courts of the United States, 
it is for the Legislature to say so. 

" That question depends on political considerations, on which the 
Legislature is to decide. Until the legislative will be expressed, 
this court can only see its duty, and must obey the laics. 

" The motion, therefore, must be granted." ^ 

I think hereafter it will be a stain on any lawyer's reputation 
to have ascribed to the President that dangerous and unconstitu- 
tional discretion. 

I presume that argument may be dispensed with after that great 
authority, but what then? The enemies of the government draw 
from that an argument to paralyze the military force of the gov- 
ernment. The President can .not suspend the writ of habeas corpus, 
therefore it can be used to discharge every body ! But is there no 
Congress ? or, is it less trustworthy than the President ? The bus- 
iness — according to those who wish to destroy the government — 
of the writ of Jiabeas corpus is to let traitors out ; its great merit is 
to turn out those who ought not to be free. I respectfully submit 
that they have overlooked some very material distinctions. "Who 
is discharged by the writ of habeas corpus ? The person who is 
not confined by law. If, therefore, he ought to have been con- 
fined, although he come up under the call of the writ, he will be 
sent back by the judge. An apprentice, a sailor, a soldier can not 
be discharged by a writ of habeas corptus. Their error is the as- 
suming that there can be no legal confinement except that which 
results from legal process. I say that there can be legal confine- 
ment whichjs not the subject of judicial examination and which 
is not by process of law ; and yet unlimited discretion does not 
exist in the President to arrest any person of whom he may have 
suspicion ; but there are rules prescribing the limits of that power 



FOR REPRESSION OF REBELLION. 281 

of arrest without judicial process, addressed to the President 
and not to the courts. That gentlemen who profess to be of the 
straitest sect of the Republicans should prefer to rush to the 
dangerous discretion of the martial law and indiscriminate au- 
thority in the President without limitation, rather than take the 
trouble to scan the settled law of the republic as it has been de- 
clared by its greatest lights, is one of the dangerous symptoms 
of the times. The President is authorized by the act of Congress 
to exercise military power, not against quiet people at home, nor 
against people who entertain treasonable sentiments, but against 
men in arms, against men aiding and abetting them ; that is, 
against men engaged actually in the insurrection, men conveying 
military information or military stores, men sending them provi- 
sions — against men doing any act of any kind to aid the actual ac- 
complishment of armed rebellion. The military force is directed 
against them. Chief Justice Taney, in a case which has become 
celebrated, and always unfortunate for the doubt which in some 
minds it has thrown over the law, previously well settled by both 
political and judicial authority, by his judgment in the case of 
Merriman, alarmed and astonished the country by declaring that 
there is no authority to hold a prisoner otherwise than by the 
leave of the courts under judicial process on judicial evidence. 
Jefferson Davis is now at Bull Run or Manassas Gap. In the 
course of a few weeks we trust the bayonets of the republic will 
point in that direction. (Applause.) We hope that superior 
numbers, great military organization, abundant military materiel, 
directed by superior military skill, and inspired by the love of 
the Constitution as well as the Union, will soon unite and destroy 
the Confederate army ; and when it is destroyed, if Mr. Jefferson 
Davis shall happen to be taken prisoner, together with 50,000 of 
his soldiers, we may expect a writ of habeas corpus issued from the 
Circuit Court of the United States at Richmond, under the protec- 
tion of United States bayonets, to call all the 50,000 before that 
court and discharge them, because there is not a magistrate's war- 
rant to hold them. (Laughter.) You may shoot a soldier, but if 
you do not shoot him you can not hold him ! Why, has every 
body forgotten the Dorr rebellion ! ! On a small scale, in a small 
but very patriotic State, men raised the arm of rebellion, and the 
Legislature declared " martial law." That is the first time those 
ill-omened words — " martial laid''' — can be found in an American 



282 CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS SUFFICIENT 

statute ; the weed has since spread and is eating out better grass. 
The governor understood it to mean — not discretionary despotic 
power above law, but the right to use military power to suppress 
that insurrection, and he did so ; and in the course of his efforts, 
he forced open a house without a warrant of search, and arrested 
a man who was aiding in the insurrection without a warrant. 

The question of the right to- do so in this case was taken to the 
Supreme Court of the United States, and there a judgment was 
rendered which has acquired more significance by subsequent 
events than by those which brought it forth. He was arrested by 
military authority ; he was held without process ; he was held by 
a military officer. Was that a violation of the law of the land ? 
What does Chief Justice Taney say in that case — for it was his 
fortune to pronounce the judgment of the Supreme Court in that 
case — a judgment which has acquired more significance by recent 
events than by those which brought it forth. 

" It was a state of war, and the established government resorted 
to the rights and usages of war to maintain itself and to overcome 
the unlawful opposition. And in that state of things, the officers 
engaged in its military service might lawfully arrest any one who, 
from the information before them, they had reasonable grounds to 
believe was engaged in the insurrection, and might order a house 
to be forcibly entered and searched when there were reasonable 
grounds for supposing he might be there concealed. Without the 
power to do this, martial law and the military array of the gov- 
ernment would be mere parade, and rather encourage attack than 
repel it." 

No wiser words than those have been said on this delicate sub- 
ject. First, we learn that when military power has been author- 
ized by law — as Congress has authorized it now — the " military 
officers" might lawfully arrest — the lawful right is therefore not 
confined to a civil magistrate — "any One who, upon information 
before them" — that is, without sworn statements of any kind — 
without legal or sworn testimony — any one " whom they had 
reasonable grounds to believe" — not any one proved legally before 
a magistrate — " was engaged in the insurrection" — not any one of 
suspicious opinions, or dangerous influence, or uttering treasonable 
sentiments — but any one engaged in the insurrection — that is, when 
hostility had passed from a mental disposition into the external 
act of hostility ; and such persons may be arrested, not merely 



FOR REPRESSION OF REBELLION. 283 

■when openly on the field in arms, but a house may without war- 
rant be forcibly broken open and searched, where there were not 
sivom but reasonable grounds to believe them concealed. 

The rights of the people and of the individual are all defined 
and guarded in this remarkable judgment; the military power is 
emancipated from judicial shackles and judicial blindness, and in 
another passage it is freed from judicial revision. 

Now, one step farther. The court is speaking of the precise 
case that we have before us — of a declaration on the part of the 
President of the existence of circumstances requiring the use of 
military force — and the question is, whether they are cognizable 
by the courts at all. The courts proceed according to judicial 
forms ; the political power does not proceed according to judicial 
forms ; it proceeds in an administrative manner, which is equally 
legal and constitutional, for the Constitution authorizes both. 
What was Merriman's case? He had aided to burn bridges and 
prevent the advance of the national troops to Washington, and 
was actively engaged in that most efficient method of arresting 
their progress. That case, then, comes within the military right 
of the President to make a military arrest. What does the chief 
justice of the United States say touching the right of the court? 
What was the case of the Baltimore maj^or and police commis- 
sioners, and their marshal of police ? They were at the head of 
an armed force hostile to the United States, which they had actu- 
ally used for hostile purposes in aid of the insurrection. They 
were subject to military arrest ; but $fter arrest, were they subject 
to the results of a judicial process for their delivery, or were they 
liable by law of equal dignity to be held in spite of the courts and 
beyond their jurisdiction, and by a right of which they were not 
entitled even to judge ? Eead the judgment of the court limiting- 
its own powers. 

"After the President has acted and called out the militia, is a 
Circuit Court of the United States authorized to inquire whether 
his decision was risrht ?" 

" If it could, then it would become the duty of the court, pro- 
vided it came to the conclusion that the President had decided in- 
correctly, to discharge those who were arrested or detained by the 
troops in the service of the United States. If the judicial power 
extends so far, the guarantee contained in the Constitution of 
the United States is a guarantee of anarchy, and not of -order. 



28-i CONSTITUTIONAL TOWERS SUFFICIENT 

Yet, if this right docs not reside in the courts when the conflict 
is raging, if the judicial power is at that time bound to follow the 
decision of the political, it must bo equally bound when the con- 
test is over." 

It can not, when peace is restored, punish as offenses and crimes 
the act which it before recognized, and was bound to recognize, 
AS 'LAWFUL. 

A military arrest, therefore, of a person engaged in the insur- 
rection is not only legal, but is beyond the cognizance of the 
courts. 

It is true this judgment was rendered when President Tyler 
was suppressing an insurrection in a free State, and it may be 
thought doubtful if the same law apply to President Lincoln sup- 
pressing an insurrection in a slave State. The learned reader 
will, under Lord Coke's advice, note the diversity. 

There are those who think against a Southern State the gov- 
ernment has no rights ; there are those who think against a South- 
ern State there are no limits to the authority of the government. 
But these sentences cover the whole case ; not by reasoning on 
my part from the language of the Constitution, not from judges 
supposed to be favorable to our side of the case, not in a case 
made in the heat of the time and in the midst of this controversy, 
but in a case decided under the presidency of John Tyler — de- 
cided when Southerners had the possession of every department 
of the government ; when they had the balance of power in the 
Supreme Court itself; whcn.it was their power that was arrested 
and defied, and when they were charged to execute the law and 
use the military power of the United States to enforce the laws 
of the United States. This judgment, rendered by one, perhaps, 
not too friendly to the United States in this hour of peril, is now 
the wcrj foundation of the law of the republic ; put there in the 
administration of John Tyler,, as if to provide for the very case — 
to exclude controversy under changed circumstances. It does 
not say that if a man is arrested by the military authority and 
brought before the court, that the court, after inquiry into the jus- 
tification of the arrest, would remand him, but that the court has 
a right to inquire into the legality of his arrest. It does not say 
that the court is entitled to inquire by the oath of witnesses, by 
the process of a magistrate. It saj^s, when the President has act- 
ed and men arc arrested, that the courts have no right to inquire 
into the subject at all. 



FOR REPRESSION OF REBELLION. 285 

The order of the President is conclusive on the courts ; he is 
exercising a political discretion vested constitutionally by law 
in him, and for that he is responsible by impeachment in Con- 
gress. Now we begin to understand the power which resides 
within the Constitution of George Washington, as well as the 
limitations which, as with bands of iron, bind it down to the ne- 
cessities of the public service, limiting and excluding every thing 
like mere discretion, every thing like mere arbitrary power, and 
subjecting the liberty of the citizen only to the written law of the 
land. 

If, then, after the President's proclamation commanding rebels 
to disperse and ordering out the militia, a man arrested by the 
President's order, because engaged in the insurrection, apply for 
a habeas corpus, how shall the law be administered ? 

By the settled course of the courts, if he show the facts on the 
petition, the court will refuse the writ. 

But if he state a case of illegal arrest, and the court award the 
writ on the false suggestion, is the military officer to produce the 
prisoner ? 

Assuredly not ; his duty is to return to the court the simple 
fact that the person is held by the order of the President for 
being engaged in the insurrection. That is a legal and tech- 
nical answer to the writ; and the court is bound to take official 
notice of the proclamation declaring the existence of the insur- 
rection, which carries with it by law the right to use military 
power. 

What if the courts attempt to enforce the production of the pris- 
oner ? It is the legal duty of the officer to resist force by force. 
Where one is held by authority paramount to the courts, that fact 
is the legal return. It has been so declared by Judge M'Lean, 
whose loss the jurisprudence of the country will long feel and de- 
plore ; and the eminent tribunal of which he was at once the or- 
nament and pillar, by the mouth of the chief justice, has only four 
years ago instructed us on this momentous question. 

A court of Wisconsin, infected by the theories of South Caro- 
lina, "undertook to compel by habeas corpus the discharge of a per. 
son held by the United States marshal. The Supreme Court 
unanimously declared it " the duly of the marshal to make known 
to the judge or court, by a proper return, the authority by which 
he holds him in custody." 



286 CONSTITUTIONAL FOWEKS SUFFICIENT 

"After the return is made, and the State judge or court judi- 
cially apprised that the party is in custody under the authority of 
the United States, they can proceed no farther ; and, consequently, it 
is his duty not to take the prisoner, nor suffer him to be taken 
before a State court or judge upon a habeas corpus, issued under 
State authority." 

*But what if the State court appeal to force ? 

" It would be his duty to resist it, and to call to his aid any 
force that might be necessary to maintain the authority of law 
against illicit interference." 

"No judicial process, -whatever form it may assume, can have 
any lawful authority outside of the limits of the jurisdiction of 
the court or judge by whom it is issued; and an attempt to en- 
force it beyond their boundaries is nothing less than lawless vio- 
lence." 

That is the condemnation of the proceedings in the Merriman 
case ; the asserted right to suspend the writ by the President was 
justly disregarded by the court; but the return showed a mili- 
tary arrest in time of insurrection, of a person engaged in it, by 
order of the President, and such an arrest was by law beyond the 
jurisdiction of the court; and the officer was not bound to obey 
the writ to bring up and hold him for the judgment of the court, 
and take the chances of adjudication for want of legal evidence, 
although the man might have been arrested upon secret informa- 
tion which would be sufficient to move an army or fight a battle 
upon, yet not recognized by a court of justice— it was his duty to 
give the court information of the authority under which he was 
held, and that excluded the right to inquire whether he was held 
rightfully or wrongfully. 

Now that is the precise condition, in every particular, of the 
President of the United States, who has seized men in arms against 
the government, or men who have been aiding those in arms, and 
is holding them pending the war. There is no hardship in hold- 
ing a man who is engaged in arms against the government ; and 
the right to determine who is in arms against the government is 
necessarily exclusively vested in the President when he is direct- 
ed by law to suppress the insurrection ; for, before that can be 
done, he must ascertain who is making it. lie can punish no man 
for treason, but he can slay thousands on the field of battle ; he 
can arrest no man because he has committed treason, but he may 



FOR REPRESSION OF REBELLION. 287 

seize and hold thousands engaged in the insurrection till it is ex- 
tinguished ! 

It is the difference between suppression of rebellion and pun- 
ishment for treason ; the power over persons and property inci- 
dent to military operations allowed by law, and usurpations of 
power not granted or forbidden. 

The President may occupy my house with armed men for de- 
fense, he may pull it down to prevent its sheltering the enemy, 
but he dare not quarter a single soldier in it without my consent, 
for the Constitution forbids it. lie may pull down a printing- 
office if required by military operations; he may, if Congress 
make seditious articles a crime, prosecute an editor ; but there is 
no power in the government to prevent him, or others for him, 
continuing to publish his paper, or controlling its contents by cen- 
sorship, for the Constitution forbids it. 

The property of rebel and loyal are alike subject to the sudden 
necessities of war; but the President, in conducting the war, has 
no right over property because it belongs to a rebel, more than he 
would have if it belonged to a loyal citizen. lie is to make war 
for suppression, not for punishment ; that belongs to the courts. 

But within the scope of warlike operations, the President, by 
the law of Congress, is paramount to the courts. lie is charged 
with a high discretionary political power, of the propriety of 
whose exercise the courts are incompetent to judge, as they have 
repeatedly declared ; the courts take the law from the political 
departments in all such cases. They can recognize no government 
unless the President has recognized it. They can entertain no 
question of boundary of the United States other than that rec- 
ognized by the political departments. They can not question the 
conduct of the President in declaring a state of insurrection or 
in ordering the militia to suppress it; and it is merely another 
application of the same principle which forbids them to control, 
arrest, or judge of the justification of any military acts done with- 
in the scope of the military authority confided to the President 
by Congress. The same law which gives the courts their juris- 
diction, exempts such acts of the President from their cognizance. 

I pray your indulgence for these dry details ; but the founda- 
tion-stones of the republic are not polished as the columns and 
cornices which glitter in the sun, and it is those deep foundations 
I am exploring. 



288 CONSTITUTIONAL TOWERS SUFFICIENT 

Gentlemen of the Association, I trust that I have made myself 
intelligible, but I fear I have wearied you by the dryness of a 
mere legal discussion, before a mixed and popular audience; but 
we all profess to be citizens of a great and free government, now 
engaged in one of those rare crises that every nation has to pass 
through at some period of its career, and it is well that we should 
look to the great charter of our liberties, and elevate it, if neces- 
sary, in our own estimation, by contemplating the wisdom with 
which it has foreseen every danger, the amplitude of the powers 
which it has provided to deal with every contingency, and the 
discretion it has exhibited in confiding powers to Congress, some 
with limitations and some without, providing in that way for 
every contingency that can arise. We may very well spend an 
hour or two, even if it be in the laborious pursuit of a dry argu- 
ment, to rid our minds of an impression which has so settled into 
public conviction among great masses of our countrymen that the 
legal authority is not sufficient to deal with the existing danger. 
It takes away half our republicanism to feel that we put down 
rebels by a violation of the law. It takes away from the eleva- 
tion, the dignity, and the superiority of the government in dealing 
with them. It is impudently flung into our faces by the message 
of Jefferson Davis, who speaks about the tyranny of men who are 
assailing him. I wish the war to be conducted as a war ought to 
be conducted, which is to determine the life, and not only the life, 
but that which is more, the freedom of the American people, the 
reputation of republican government, its respect, its enduring pow- 
er, and its influence over the nations of the world. There are those 
abroad who would rejoice at our fall — there arc few who would 
not, except the oppressed of the Old World. In their name I ap- 
peal to you — let not the name of the republic go to Europe hum- 
bled by the confession of its own failure. Let it not go shorn of 
the glory which has made it an ever-present terror to the enemies 
of liberty abroad. Let it stand glittering in armor, but the armor 
of the law. Let it stand the emblem of the power of the people 
to govern themselves according to laws wisely foreseeing danger, 
without putting their liberties, their lives, and their honor at the 
discretion of men no wiser or better than themselves — dictators to 
supply the want of foresight in the people. (Applause.) I am 
as humble as any man in this assembly, but there is no man here 
good enough to be my master. I respect and confide in the wis- 



FOR REPRESSION OF REBELLION. 289 

dom, resolution, and uprightness of President Lincoln ; but Presi- 
dent Lincoln is not good enough for my master. (Applause.) I 
will -trust him with the administration of the laws, but I will not 
trust him to make them, nor beyond them. I will tr ust him with 
all the great deposit of power that the Constitution has placed in 
ftiiTTaancls^— thatvast power which, when it is called forth in the 
magnificence of its military array, blinds the eye accustomed only 
to the habiliments of peace ; but I will not add to it a dictator- 
ship — arbitrary and discretionary powers without the guidance 
and above the control of written law. I protest against it in the 
name of republican liberty. I protest against it in the name of 
every limitation in the Constitution under which we live. I pro- 
test against it in the name of those Englishmen who defied in arms 
their king, because he claimed over them discretionary, unlimited 
power ; and of those fathers of the Constitution who in this coun- 
try followed in their footsteps, were lighted by their wisdom, were 
guided by their example, and embodied in a law paramount to 
the varying will of the people the necessary restrictions upon the 
frailties of human nature. I turn with reverence to the great 
Northern light of the Constitution, the Newton of this great sys- 
tem — which is heaven while it is order, but will be chaos if dis- 
cretion rule it — to guide my footsteps in this hour of darkness, 
and with him I read, inscribed on the foundations of the govern- 
ment, these cardinal principles : first, government by representa- 
tion ; next, that solemn declaration that the will of the majority — 
not of newspapers nor of public meetings — the will of the majori- 
to — not in a fright, not in a panic, not divined from apparent ne- 
cessity, but solemnly declared according to the forms of law — shall 
have the force of law; then, that there shall be a written Consti- 
tution, defining and carefully limiting the powers conferred upon 
the men charged to represent the people, and restricting their dis- 
cretion. In that great, last legacy of the great Northern states- 
man, when he was speaking, as it were, to future ages, and telling 
them, by the grandest enumeration that ever summed up a na- 
tion's progress, of the elements of our prosperity, our power, our 
advancement, and the glories of our achievements — in that great 
oration he thought it important to call to the minds of his fellow- 
citizens that these glorious results were not the offspring of mob 
law, or of arbitrary discretion, of despotism disguised as democra- 
cy, which rules across the water, or of military law, or of law made 

T 



290 CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS SUFFICIENT 

for the exigency by executive usurpation, or of the law of neces- 
sity, or of the law of the safety of the people, but that the fountain 
from which all flowed was the rigid adherence to written law, to 
the will of the people proclaimed in constitutional forms. It was law 
so enacted that he proclaimed to be supreme// It was the result 
of a government so contrived and so administered, one that had 
attracted the admiration and the envy of the Old World, and was 
the foundation and prosperity of the New, which he celebrated; 
and in this his great parting legacy to his countrymen, when he 
prophesied the endurance of the republic, it was because these 
principles were its foundation, and he thought they would not be 
shaken. It is because these principles have been departed from 
that the edifice of the Constitution now reels around us. We 
must recur to them, cling to them, act upon them, if we would 
maintain the government that we have received from our fathers. 
It is our liberty that makes us respected and envied, powerful 
and glorious — our liberty of law in contrast with that which is 
democratic license, that mere unchecked, uncontrolled, absolute 
will of a floating majority, rolling over every barrier, where dema- 
gogues lash the people into fury in order to accomplish their am- 
bitious purposes. The peculiarity of the American people has al- 
ways been its adherence and obedience to law ; its hesitation, even 
under the greatest emergencies, to step across the lines of the law. 
It is only the revolutionary fever of this latter time that has driv- 
en for a moment these American ideas and these American feel- 
in o-s from the American heart. It is now time that we should be 
enabled to show that we not only have the military power to sup- 
press insurrection, but that we can do it clad in the panoply of 
law. It is only weighty to those who are not yet habituated to 
wear it. We have proved it on many a field ; let us not throw it 
off in the day of battle. 

The nations of Europe fail in their efforts for republican gov- 
ernment because they are not habituated to the restraints of law 
self-imposed ; they are not habituated to subordinate their will 
of the moment to the calm judgment which has foreseen and pro- 
vided for the exigencies of the case. They fail because they ad- 
mit the law of necessity to control the law of the land, and .leave 
a discretion which is despotism to provide for the emergencies of 
the moment. It is self-control that is the greatness of the Amer- 
ican people. (Applause.) IUs obedience to their own law that 



FOR REPRESSION OF REBELLION. £91 

is their power. It is because they have declared that their Con- 
stitution is the salus populi ; it is because they adhere to the rule 
that the written law is the voice of the people ; it is because they 
appeal from the hour of passion to the day of calm reflection, that 
they have proved themselves worthy of the liberty that their 
fathers conquered for them. When they shall neglect to adhere 
to that great rule, when they shall no longer be masters over 
themselves, when they can not stop in a moment of passion to re- 
flect upon the limits they themselves have placed around their 
passions for their own good, and reverently bow before the holy 
laws, they can no longer be the peaceful, orderly, progressive, and 
powerful republic of Washington. Till now the current of our 
life has rolled on, quiet and powerful as the Gulf Stream. The 
storm of party strife has rippled on its surface ; the foam of pas- 
sion has vanished with the storm that caused it ; and the great 
deep, undisturbed, has rolled still, quietly, majestically, and re- 
flecting from its surface the image of liberty robed in law. When 
you shall upheave its lower depths by the earthquake of revolu- 
tion, you will have changed its majestic course ; you will have 
dried up the current of your prosperity ; you will have closed the 
sources of your power ; and in the place of the vanished waters 
will appear the lava and scoria) which strew the soil of revolu- 
tionary Europe. (Applause.) 



.CONFISCATION OF THE PROPERTY OF 
THOSE ENGAGED IN REBELLION. 

Two Letters to the Hon. Justin S. Morrill, a Representative in Congress from 

Vermont. 

Mr. Davis closely followed, and watched with interest the proceed- 
ings and discussions of the Thirty-seventh Congress, for a seat in which 
he had been defeated, under the circumstances already stated. During 
the debates in Congress in regard to the " Confiscation Bills," he fre- 
quently conferred with his former associates in Congress in relation to 
those measures, and to one of them he addressed the following letters : 

Baltimore, Md., June 6, 1862. 

My dear Sir, — I have followed with great interest and some 
surprise the course of argument in opposition to the Confiscation 
Bills. 

Their opponents seem inclined to trifle with the people, or else 
they have forgotten the simplest elements of law. 

I observe that some respectable lawyers confound the Confis- 
cation Bills with bills of attainder or of pains and penalties ! 

Congress is rightly forbidden to pass a bill of attainder ; and I 
would forever maintain that inhibition. But what is a bill of at- 
tainder ? 

It is a law performing the office of a judgment. It is a Legis- 
lature doing the work of a judge. It is an act of Congress or of 
Parliament, declaring a particular person guilty of a specified act, 
and ordering his punishment. The passage of the law places the 
person just where a conviction and judgment of a court places 
him ; nothing remains but execution. 

It is ridiculous to call the bills before Congress bills of attain- 
der. They have no one of the penalties of a bill of attainder, and 
the word can be applied to them in no sense ever recognized in a 
law-book. They who do so apply the word are either ill-inform- 
ed, or invoke a prejudice to do the work of argument. 

The bills before Congress name no particular persons, therefore 
they -punish nobody. They declare that certain acts, committed 



CONFISCATION OF THE PROPERTY, ETC. 293 

after their passage, shall be punished by confiscation ; but, till the 
act is committed, no one can be declared guilty of it ; they do not 
therefore attaint any one. A bill of attainder relates to the jiast, 
and nothing but punishment remains after its passage. The bills 
before Congress relate to the future — declare the future conse- 
quences of future acts, and leave both the person and the fact to 
be ascertained after the law declaring the punishment shall have 
passed. 

What excuse is there to confound such a law with a bill of at- 
tainder? a legislative judgment on a past act with a legislative 
penalty on a future act? 

The same gentlemen invoke against the bills the clause of the 
Constitution which declares that " Congress shall have power to 
declare the punishment of treason ; but no attainder of treason shall 
work corruption of blood or forfeiture, except during the life of 
the person attainted." But what has that clause to do with laws 
which confessedly provide for confiscation without conviction of 
the person for treason. The most plausible objection to the con- 
fiscation laws is that they do not make the forfeiture dependent 
on a previous conviction ; it is therefore clear that the clause 
which defines the consequences of a conviction of the person can 
have no bearing on a law which prescribes other modes of ascer- 
taining and enforcing a forfeiture. It may be that those methods 
are forbidden, and, if so, the law must fail of execution ; but it is 
irrelevant to quote a rule of judgment defining and limiting the 
consequences of a conviction for treason against a law which con- 
templates neither conviction nor judgment for treason. 

It is certain that Congress can pass no law whereby a person 
convicted of treason can be sentenced to forfeit his property, be- 
yond his life, as a consequence of the conviction. Such a law 
would be void. Such a judgment would vest no title in the gov- 
ernment, and the heirs of the owner could eject any one claiming 
his property under the United States. 

But the provision does not say Congress shall not make for- 
feiture the penalty of any act, nor even that Congress may not 
make forfeiture a penalty of treason itself; it merely says that 
forfeiture beyond the life shall not be one of the consequences of 
a conviction of the person for treason. 

Now the pending bills do not connect confiscation and convic- 
tion of the person for any crime, still less for treason. 



294 CONFISCATION OF THE PROPERTY OF 

This clause therefore, whatever it meant and whatever be its 
effect has no relation to bills such as those reported by Mr. Eliot. 
That clause does not prove Mr. Eliot's bills to be unconstitutional. 

Is there any other clause of the Constitution which forbids such 
legislation? 

It seems to me the lawyers arc especially at fault when they 
refer to the provisions relating to the trial of all crimes by jury. 

No person can be convicted of any crime but by a jury; but 
these bills do not contemplate any conviction of any person, any 
proceeding against the person whatever. 

Still less can any argument be deduced from the fifth amend- 
ment, declaring that " no person shall be held to answer for any 
capital or other infamous crime, unless on presentment of a grand 
jury," etc. ; " nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without 
due process of law ;" for no one is "held to answer" under these 
laws at all; and the question is whether this mode of depriving 
them of property is not a due process of laic for that purpose. 

There are various processes of law for depriving persons of life, 
liberty, and property, and one method does not exclude another 
method, but each is good in its particular ease, while some arc for- 
bidden, and therefore are unconstitutional in all cases. A bill of 
attainder and an ex post facto law are forbidden. No person can 
be held to answer for any crime unless on the presentment of a 
grand jury, nor tried otherwise than by a jury of the State and 
district, If, therefore, Congress pass a bill of attainder against 
Jefferson Davis, or should enact that a Court of Admiralty should 
try and convict lor murder, without a jury, or indictment by a 
grand jury, that law would be unconstitutional, for it is forbidden. 
It is a trial and a conviction without due process of law, and death 
under it is murder, and imprisonment under it an illegal violation 
of the liberty o\' the citizen. But it would be a gross error to say 
that no one can be deprived of liberty or life otherwise than un- 
der criminal prosecution, for then the President has murdered 
many men in the field, and enslaved many men in the military 
prisons. For men in arms, a bullet is due process of law; seizure 
by military power is due process of law; they arc not conviction, 
nor trial, nor punishment of the persons ; they as assuredly de- 
prive them of life or of liberty as a conviction and a sheriff, and 
they are just as legal as conviction and hanging. 

So there are methods of depriving persons of property which 



THOSE ENGAGED IN REBELLION. 295 

are not connected with criminal proceedings against the person, 
and provisions which, define the modes of proceedings against the 
person, and limit the consequences of such proceedings, have no 
relation to processes of law not against the person, which yet do 
deprive the person of his property. 

Taxation deprives the person of his property, not by any ju- 
dicial process, hut by an administrative process; yet it is a process 
<>f hi to, essential to the existence of the government. It is just as 
rational to quote the prohibition against taking private property 
for public use without compensation, to prove the unconstitution- 
ality of taxation, as to invoice the prohibitions against making 
confiscation a consequence of conviction, to prove that there could 
be no confiscation without conviction. 

If taxes be not paid, the failure is followed by seizure and sale, 
without judicial process; for a small amount of taxes a large- 
estate may be sold ; and that is a consequence annexed to the ille- 
gal act of failing to pay the amount assessed. Not unfrequently 
a percentage is added for delay, and levied with the principal of 
the tax itself. "When the sheriff, or the marshal, or the collector 
sells the property for taxes, that is dice process of law, and the 
change of property is in the nature of a penalty, and the expenses 
of the proceedings are veritable forfeitures for illegal acts. 

It is, therefore, a wholly unfounded assumption that property 
is liable to be taken for the defaults of the owner only upon or 
after conviction for an offense by jury and court. Yet it is this 
confusion between criminal proceedings against the person and 
proceedings against property because of a person's acts, which alone 
lends plausibility to the argument against the Confiscation Bills. 

But, so far from being a new method of proceeding, intend* d 
to evade the securities thrown around the person against criminal 
prosecutions, it is one of the oldest forms of proceeding known to 
our laws. 

The slightest examination of the revenue laws of the United 
States will show that, from the foundation of the government, for- 
feitures for illegal acts have always been enforced in the court-, 
irrespective of the conviction or prosecution of the guilty person. 
The fact has been investigated by the judge without a jury, and 
the confiscation enforced for eighty years, without any one dream- 
ing that citizens were being punished without cither grand or 
petty jury. 



296 CONFISCATION OF THE PROPERTY OF 

The act of 1799 declares goods entered under fraudulent in- 
voices shall be forfeited ; and the forfeiture is enforced by pro- 
ceeding against the goods, and not the person committing the 
fraud. Surely the men of 1799 knew what their Constitution 
meant. 

By various acts of Congress, goods imported in certain foreign 
vessels are forfeited, together with the vessel, and the forfeiture is 
enforced against the goods and vessel, and not by conviction of 
the owner or importers. 

By our navigation acts, licensed vessels are forfeited for being 
employed in the foreign trade, or when found using a forged or 
altered license, or if sold to one not a citizen ; and all these for- 
feitures are enforced against the vessel directly, and not by con- 
viction of the owner whose property is confiscated. 

It is a highly penal offense to sell spirituous liquors in the In- 
dian country, and the law not merely punishes the person who 
carries liquor there by fine on conviction, but the boats, stores, 
places of deposit, and packages of the trader are directed to be 
searched, and if liquor or wine be found there, all the goods, boats, 
packages, etc., of the trader shall be forfeited to the United States; 
and the forfeiture is enforced, not by conviction of the person, but 
by seizure and condemnation of the articles confiscated in pro- 
ceedings against them. The manner of proceeding for forfeiture 
under the revenue laws is expressly extended to confiscations un- 
der the Indian trading laws. 

The laws for suppressing the slave-trade abound in pointed 
illustrations. 

Every person concerned in the trade is declared guilty of a 
crime punishable by indictment, the penalty varying from a heavy 
fine to death, according to the acts committed ; and side by side 
with these penalties, to be enforced by indictment and conviction, 
are classes of forfeiture to be enforced by libel against the thing- 
forfeited. The forfeiture of confiscation depends on the fact of a 
crime committed, but not on the conviction of the person for the 
crime. The fact is ascertained by the appropriate tribunal in 
either case independently ; and it is quite possible that the crim- 
inal may be acquitted while the vessel may be confiscated. 

No citizen can hold any title or interest in any vessel engaged 
in the slave-trade; and if he do, it is forfeited by proceedings 
against the vessel, and the owner is liable to a penalty besides. 



THOSE ENGAGED IN 11EBELLION. 297 

The United States vessels are authorized to seize vessels engaged 
in the traffic, and the vessel and every thing found on her is for- 
feited except the slaves. They can not be claimed by their own- 
er, even though really slaves by the law of the owner's country. 
It would seem that the slaves are freed by the law ; for the owner 
can not claim them, and no one else can show a title to them. 
These laws do not apply merely to the African slave-trade, but 
the same penalties and forfeitures attach to transporting from Bra- 
zil or Cuba into the United States persons who arc slaves by the 
laws of those countries. The owner loses his vessel, the master 
his slaves on the vessel, and the persons engaged in the traffic 
or in navigating the vessel commit a crime for which they are 
punishable on conviction ; but their conviction is not essential to 
the condemnation of the vessel or the discharge of the slaves. 

In some cases, persons engaged in the slave-trade are guilty 
of piracy, and suffer death ; yet in those, as in other cases, the 
vessel and cargo are confiscated by process against them, and 
wholly irrespective of any conviction of the guilty persons. 

The precedents of the slave-trade laws arc of special interest in 
relation to the confiscation of the slaves of rebels. The necessary 
form of confiscation is emancipation. The temper of the country 
would not tolerate the sale of slaves by the United States ; still 
less would it tolerate the exemption of this species of property 
from any consequences the law may attach to any property of 
rebels. Slave property is the pretext of the rebellion, and the 
chief instrument by which the revolutionists have coerced submis- 
sion to their will. Sound policy requires that a weapon of such 
power be broken or wrested from the hands of the enemies of the 
government, and nothing ought to arrest the blow but the plain 
prohibitions of the Constitution; for subordination to the supreme 
law is the condition of national existence. Fortunately, its wise 
provisions strip the government of no power which a free govern- 
ment ought to wield ; least of all does it forbid the confiscation 
of slaves, and emancipation is an inseparable incident of owner- 
ship. Of course, they who call confiscation laws bills of attainder, 
will call emancipation of confiscated slaves abolition of slavery in 
the States by Congress. .But no loyal people will confound the 
release of the government's title in the slaves confiscated with a 
prohibition against holding any slave in the State. 

But Mr. Eliot's bill is in one particular wholly indefensible. It 



298 CONFISCATION OF THE PROFEETY OF 

violates all constitutional principles of American law in requiring 
persons to prove their innocence. It places the title to negro prop- 
erty of loyal people at the mercy of the government, for it strips 
the owner of all power to prevent confiscation unless he can prove 
that he has not aided the rebellion, and that it is impossible for 
any one to prove. Eequire an oath that he has not been so en- 
gaged, but do not stain American law with a provision that a 
man shall be presumed guilty ! ! 

The bill is defective in another particular. It gives the frced- 
man no legal protection. He can, the bill says, plead the law; but 
the master will never sue him, but seize him. The freedman must 
be the actor, and the law gives him no standing in court. The 
United States is in duty bound to extend to him the habeas cor- 
pus in a United States Court which now no law gives him; and 
if these be not done, the act of emancipation will give no real free- 
dom, but will be merely a source of endless confusion. Men freed 
by the law of the special session are now suffering in Maryland 
for want of such provision. 

The slave -trade laws were passed in 1794, 1800, 1807, 1818, 
1819, and 1820, in the administrations of Washington, Adams, 
Jefferson, and Monroe. They involve every principle now as- 
sailed in the Confiscation Bills, from the confiscation of property 
for criminal acts of the owner, without conviction of the guilty 
person, by process of law against the thing and not against the 
person, to the freeing of slaves for the violation of law by their 
owners. 

It is therefore frivolous to assail these laws on the ground of 
unconstitutionality. If any principle is settled by the uniform 
practice of the government, it is this principle of confiscation for 
criminal acts by direct process against the property confiscated, 
and wholly without regard to the conviction or prosecution of 
the guilty person. 

This review of Congressional enactments may well increase our 
astonishment at the hardihood of the assailants of these laws. 
They treat the precedents of the founders of the government with 
no more respect than they do the Constitution they made. Their 
objections to the bills are plausible only when the language of 
the Constitution is perverted and misapplied ; and that distortion 
can only escape exposure by carefully abstaining from all con- 
sideration of the contemporary exposition of the Constitution by 
its authors. 



THOSE ENGAGED IN REBELLION. 299 

It appears, therefore, from this investigation : 

I. That there is no prohibition in the Constitution against mak- 
ing confiscation a penalty for any crime. 

II. There is nothing in the Constitution which makes confisca- 
tion dependent on the conviction of the person on indictment. 

III. There is nothing in the Constitution which limits all con- 
fiscations to the life of the guilty person. 

IV. The only clause relating to the subject simply forbids Con- 
gress to make forfeiture beyond the life of the convict a conse- 
quence of conviction for treason, 

V. But it does not say that Congress may not by law confiscate 
absolutely the whole property of persons who do the acts speci- 
fied in the bills reported by Mr. Eliot, by proceedings against the 
property, and not in consequence of a conviction of the person. 

VI. And the whole course of legislation of the country has 
sanctioned the distinction hy laws passed under the auspices of 
the fathers of the Constitution. 

If any one ask, Why prohibit confiscation in pursuance of con- 
viction, and allow it without conviction? 

I reply, The burden of showing the unconstitutionality of the 
law lies in those who affirm it. They can not defeat it by show- 
ins; that the Constitution has forbidden it in cases not now con- 
templated. The question is what the Constitution says against 
confiscation tuithout conviction of the person ; and I say it is silent. 
It limits confiscation as the consequence of conviction, and there 
it stops. 

It is possible a reason may be found for this limitation in con- 
nection with a conviction, in the spirit which dictated the defini- 
tion of treason while other crimes were left to the definition of 
Congress. 

Treason had been the pretext of many bloody judicial murders 
in English history ; constructive treasons were the contrivances 
of jealous tyrants, or greedy applicants, or fierce opponents. 

To limit the crime to open war, to require double proof, to re- 
move the temptations of cupidity from among the motives of pros- 
ecution of the person, were thought correctives to the political or 
personal passions which might prompt unjust or revengeful pros- 
ecutions to the death. The temptation of covetousness was re- 
moved when conviction could involve forfeiture only between 
judgment and execution ! 



800 CONFISCATION OF THE PROPERTY OF 

But a confiscation enforced by other process of law than a con- 
viction of the person followed by a bloody end was subject to no 
such objection, and it was justly left to the wisdom and modera- 
tion of Congress for emergencies like the present. 

It is quite certain that the restriction of confiscation in conse- 
quence of conviction and attainder to the life of the person con- 
victed is not restricted to lands, and still more certainly has no 
reference to estates tail. They were liable at common law to for- 
feiture by attainder under their form of conditional fees, though 
singularly enough a distinguished senator assumes the contrary ; 
they were exempted for a while by the construction of the statute 
"De donis conditionalibus,"but lost their exemption in the reign 
ofnenryVIII. 

Such attempts to escape a constitutional difficulty merely dis- 
credit all defense of the Confiscation Bills. 

The Constitution .means just what it says, and the opponents 
of confiscation try to make it mean what it does not say. Leave 
that style of argument to them, in common with those strict con- 
structionists who have found the denial of powers to Congress the 
most effectual way of leaving the government disarmed and pow- 
erless in the face of rebellion in arms. 

The real explanation of the restriction, as well as of the careful 
definition of treason, I think I have above given. It indicates the 
desire to exclude political jwrsecution, but not to deprive the gov- 
ernment of any power essential to the maintenance of the govern- 
ment against the temptation of ambition or the violence of insub- 
ordinate factions. 

It is quite certain that neither of the provisions respecting trea- 
son prevents the punishment of acts which amount to treason un- 
der other names and free from those restrictions. The traitors 
who burned the Maryland bridges and shot the Massachusetts 
men on the 19th of April were guilty of treason, but they were 
also guilty of resisting the laws of the United States, and of a riot, 
and of obstructing mail routes, and for any of those crimes any 
punishment, any confiscation may be constitutionally imposed as' 
the consequence of the judgment, and one witness may prove them. 

Still, the constitutional provision is a salutary admonition in 
favor of moderation specially suited to these times. 

Very sincerely your friend, Henry Winter Davis. 

Hon. Justin S. Morrill, Washington. 



CONFISCATION OF THE PROPERTY OF 3Q1 



Baltimore, Md., June 15, 1862. 

My dear Sir, — In the hasty note of the 6th of June, I singu- 
larly enough forgot to mention the most pointed and conclusive 
authority for confiscation by emancipation. 

The laws of the United States in the District of Columbia pro- 
hibited the importation of slaves for sale or residence, declared 
the slave imported free, and punished the importer by fine. 

These laws were adopted by Congress from the laws of Vir- 
ginia and Maryland. They have been repeatedly enforced in 
both those States. Every gentleman practicing'in the courts of 
the district has enforced the freedom vested by those laws. I 
have myself, in more than one instance, successfully asserted the 
claim before the courts of the District and of Virginia, and the 
Supreme Court has sustained, in repeated instances, the validity 
of the law. The most recent case that I recall is that of Rhodes 
vs. Bell (2 Howard, 397), decided in 1844. 

Those are old laws, passed in the good old times, before men 
were smitten with madness. But the compromise acts of Mr. 
Clay, passed in 1850, embody the same principle. The law of 
1850 forbidding the introduction of slaves into the District of 
Columbia for sale, declared the slave so imported liberated and 
free. No greater name than Mr. Clay can be cited on any con- 
stitutional question, and the name of President Fillmore ought 
surely to satisfy the most timid of conservatives. Never were 
laws more keenly contested, more gravely considered, or adopted 
by abler men than the famous compromise acts of 1850 ; and it 
would seem that a Republican Congress might safely err in com- 
pany with the men of 1850, than be right with the doubtful 
friends or secret foes of the republic in 1862. 

These laws and these judgments of the courts under them dis- 
pose of the whole question of confiscation by emancipation, with- 
out indictment and conviction of the guilty person, but by civil 
process on behalf of the person freed for the master's illegal act. 

The process for enforcing the freedom of the slave was by suit 
in the name of the negro against the owner for freedom, in the 
form of an ordinary action of trespass, and the title to freedom 
was vested by operation of law immediately on the consummation 
of the act of forfeiture, and the suit was merely the judicial form 
of authenticating the title the law had vested. 



302 THOSE ENGAGED IN REBELLION. 

If you sec fit to publish this note in confirmation and illustra- 
tion of the views formerly presented, you are at liberty to do so. 
Had I thought of this case, so very familiar in my legal experience 
and in that of every gentleman of the bar in this region, I should 
have spared you a long dissertation by this decisive authority. 
Very sincerely your friend, H. Winter Davis. 

* Hon. Justin S. Morrill, of Vermont. 



THE DEMOCRATIC HUE AND CRY A SHAM.— 
CONFISCATION AND EMANCIPATION. 

On the 30th of October, 18C2, Mr. Davis addressed a very large meet- 
ing in Concert Hall, at Newark, New Jersey, on the condition of the 
country, and directed his argument especially against the "Peace and 
Kccognition" party, then growing up, and threatening to carry the North- 
ern elections. In the course of his remarks (of which only an incom- 
plete account has been taken or published) he said : 

"In arms, they (the rebels) will defy you; disarmed, they will 
beg for terms. But there are persons who are opposed to waging 
a war of subjugation ! With the usual cunning of friends of trai- 
tors, they attempt to delude you into the supposition that because 
the South may be beaten in arms, therefore it will be reduced to 
slavery. That is at its option. If it shall persistently refuse to 
accept the benefits of free government under the Constitution of 
the United States, then the question is presented to us, If men per- 
versely refuse to govern themselves under our laws, whether we 
shall therefore sacrifice our nation and our independence, permit 
anarchy because of their refusal, or govern them by law ? The 
question will be then, Shall we be destroyed, and the government 
broken into a divided territory, or shall we, when there is no other 
way, subject and keep in subjection those who will neither govern 
themselves under the laws nor submit to them ? I have no hesi- 
tation in saying, put what meaning you please on subjection, that 
their subjection means my freedom." 

ltcferring to the threats then made that the army would rebel if General M'Clel- 
lan were removed from command, he said : 

"Democrats tell us that they alone can carry on a successful 
war. But the War of 1812 had Mr. Clay for its civil leader, and 
General Scott for one of its military leaders, and neither of them 
was thought to be much of a Democrat. We then had an Indian 
war, and that was managed by General Ilarrison. Then came 
the Mexican War ; and the civil mismanagement of it was done 



30-1 THE DEMOCRATIC HUE AND CRY A SHAM. 

by Mr. Polk, while what was done in the field by military chiefs, 
who won it, was done by Scott and Taylor. 

" The nearest approach to a war conducted by Democrats is the 
present rebellion. They got it up, they began it, and the generals 
now in highest command on both sides are Democrats. Whether 
they, or either of them, have been successful up to this time, you 
can judge as well as I. 

"And I will say, on my own account, although it may not be 
popular to say it, that in my opinion slowness is not the way to 
prostrate this rebellion. And say what you please of ' military 
science,' I think the audacity and perversity of Zachary Taylor 
at Buena Vista would have stamped out this rebellion a year ago." 

Mr. Davis then referred to the Democratic clamor about habeas corpus, and re- 
called the case of General Jackson at New Orleans, of Jefferson in Wilkinson's case, 
of General M'Clcllan's arrest of the Maryland Legislature, and of the late proceed- 
ings in Baltimore by Generals Dix and Wool, all Democitits. 

"All such hue and cry was a sham. They mean to stop the 
war. These men are insidiously referring to particular instances 
of interference with rights, which, indeed, are, in my judgment, il- 
legal and unnecessary, and hereafter to be rebuked, but which can 
■ not now be rebuked without endangering the public cause and 
the safety of all. 

" Oh ! but they say the President is an ' Abolitionist.' He and 
his party have abolished slavery in the District. Do they mean 
to re-establish it there ? If so, let us know it ; if not, why howl ? 
' Oh ! but it is a great outrage upon private rights ; and the Proc- 
lamation ! — it tends to disturb and overthrow all the foundations 
of society in the Southern States !' Suppose it does. Are we, at 
this time, to prevent any such disaster which they, the rebels alone, 
have rendered possible ? I have my difficulties about the Proc- 
lamation, but not upon their grounds. Their objection is not that 
it is unconstitutional, not that it is illegal, but that it is dangerous 
to their friends, and our enemies, in the South. And on those 
grounds on which they oppose it I am in favor of it. ' Unconsti- 
tutional!' 'illegal!' grant it. ' Imprudent !' concede it. I always 
like to concede every thing they say, and then deduce the proper 
consequences from that with which they attempt to deceive the 
people. Suppose it is unconstitutional — it is an unconstitutional 
act that hurts no loyal State. Grant that it is illegal — its illegal- 
ity does not touch any man in any State not now in rebellion.'''' 



CONFISCATION AND EMANCIPATION. 305 

Referring to the Emancipation Proclamation, he said : 

" If that proclamation is to be effectual, it must have the force 
of law — it must have the force of a national guarantee — not mere- 
ly of the President's intention. Those who are to be emancipated 
thereby must know that they will be sustained in their refusal to 
<lo their masters' bidding. They must know that they are to re- 
fuse for their own profit. If we give them no interest in the result 
of the war, they can take none. They must be made to know 
that by the law of the land ; by the duty, not merely by the inten- 
tion of the President ; guarantees, not offers of freedom ; not dec- 
larations of freedom if they can snatch it, but reality of freedom 
if they will help to win it, shall be maintained to the full extent 
that the government maintains the integrity of its territory. Un- 
til that is done, you have nothing but promises on paper; when 
that is done, you have four millions of allies on the territory of 
your enemies." "If Congress at its coming session will recom- 
mend the adoption of an amendment to the Constitution declaring 
that no State shall tolerate slavery within its borders, extinguish- 
ing slavery throughout the United States, with a provision, if 
they see fit, for compensating the owners in loyal States, and such 
amendment is finally ratified, then you will have gone to the root 
and core of the matter.' 

" In my judgment, we ought also to have a Confiscation Bill — 
one going deeper into the skin than the flimsy thing passed by the 
last Congress — a bill that will touch the lands of the leaders of the 
rebellion ; not for life, but in the fee simple. Then why not dis- 
tribute those lands, as public lands, to the negroes who shoulder 
the musket ? Have they not received bounties before for services 
in the Eevolution, and prize-money for service in the navy ? You 
can not bribe the negroes to fight for nothing, with the certainty 
of being re-enslaved after the war. lie is better off in slavery 
than that. But wild 'Abolitionists' do not talk in this way. They 
seem to think you have but to utter a proclamation, and the negro 
will straightway rise to the clouds and sit in freedom at once. 
Then there are some, and the President is among them, who labor 
under the delusion that you can free the negroes and send them 
off at once to a foreign land. The thing is an impossibility ; and 
if it were practicable, it would not be desirable. The lands in the 
Southern States must be cultivated, and the negroes will remain 
there, and will have to cultivate them, even if it were possible, or 

U 



306 THE DEMOCRATIC HUE AND CRY A SHAM, ETC. 

in the power of the nation, pecuniarily or physically, to remove 
four millions of them from the country. They will remain until 
the natural course of emigration in a long series of years may 
transfer them to some other clime which they shall think will be 
better for them, unless, indeed, collision and a war of races should 
ensue in the Confederate States if they can accomplish their inde- 
pendence, and in that case they may have another St. Domingo. 

" But let us go on with our heroic soldiers, and let such changes 
be made as the President shall see fit, and with the devotion al- 
ready shown by a people that has so far transcended in resources 
the devotion of their authorities in disposing of them — with that 
indomitable resolution never to submit, or to be content with any 
thing less than the subjugation of rebellion, the defeat of rebels, 
and the victorious maintenance of the whole republic, we shall, to- 
day or to-morrow, or sixty days hence, or in the spring, or next 
year, or two or three years hence, utterly and forever stamp out 
this rebellion." 



NO PEACE BEFORE VICTORY. 

It was in February of 18G3 that the movement in favor of emancipa- 
tion in Maryland began to take definite shape in active political move- 
ments to that end. It could only be accomplished by a change in the 
Constitution of the State, for which purpose the Legislature to be elected 
in November of that year would have to favor the submitting to the peo- 
ple the question of call of a Convention ; and the canvass of the State 
previous to that election would have to be carried on against all the 
influences and power which slavery in Maryland could bring to its de- 
fense. In these movements Mr. Davis took a principal part ; and to 
that part, and to the efforts of the Hon. J. A. J. Crcsswell, was due, in 
great measure, the complete success of the movement. Mr. Davis visit- 
ed various parts of the State, and spoke to large meetings at Elkton on 
the Gth of October, at Towsontown on the loth, at Salisbury on the 
24th, at Snow Hill on the 27th, and at Baltimore on the 28th of Octo- 
ber. The election in November resulted overwhelmingly in favor of the 
measure. At the same election Mr. Davis was returned without oppo- 
sition from the Baltimore district to Congress, and Mr. Cresswell from 
the district composed of the eight counties on the Eastern Shore. 

Of the speeches made by Mr. Davis during that campaign in favor of 
emancipation no adequate report was made, or record or account suffi- 
cient to enable us to reproduce them in this collection. A resume of 
some of these speeches may be found in some of the Baltimore papers of 
the 9th, 16th, and 29th of October, 18G3. 

In September Mr. Davis had been invited to take part in the canvass 
in Pennsylvania for the gubernatorial election there. In compliance, he 
delivered the following speech at Concert Hall, in Philadelphia, on the 
24th of September; 

Fellow-Citizens of the United States, — The election that 
is now pending in Pennsylvania and that which is now pending 
in the State of Maryland will go very far, though perhaps in very 
unequal degrees, to determine the presidential contest of next 
year. In my judgment, the election of a Democratic President, 
or, if he prefer the term, a Conservative President, will be the end 
of the war, and with the end of the war, in my judgment, the end 
of the Union of these States. It will be the end, likewise, of that 



308 ^0 PEACE BEFORE VICTORY. 

great result, though not the original object of the war — the change 
of the social relations in the rebellious States, which have occa- 
sioned our present disturbances. (Applause.) 

If it be of any moment to any one here that the conduct of the 
national affairs shall remain in the hands of those who represent 
the principles which now preside over their conduct — if there be 
any one here who thinks that the war ought to be continued un- 
til every rebellious weapon sinks in submission to the national 
authority — if there be any one who thinks it is worth while, after 
having had experience of the mischiefs that grow from a vicious 
social organization, that we shall not be twice jeoparded by the 
same cause when we have the opportunity to root it out, let that 
person bear in mind that on the vote of Pennsylvania this fall de- 
pends, in a great measure, that result. (Applause.) 

The gentleman who is competing with your present distin- 
guished and patriotic executive for the position of governor of 
this Commonwealth does not leave you in the doubts with which 
Mr. Seymour, and other gentlemen less candid or more prudent, 
veil their opinion. Here, we understand our opponents formally 
declare that the Democratic party alone can restore the Union ; 
that it can not be restored by arms ; that it can only be restored 
by peace and conciliation ; and that they are the only persons 
who can so restore it. They were in power when the rebellion 
broke out. Why did they not arrest it ? (Great applause.) They 
had all the factions that called themselves Democratic united^ — 
could have prevented the election of the gentleman who they now 
say has brought on the war. Why did they not subordinate their 
internal party differences to the patriotic purpose of averting an 
otherwise inevitable war ? (Applause.) They say that they alone 
can restore the Union, and by peace. Then why .did they break 
it up ? (" That's it," and applause.) They are very fond of ask- 
ing who is responsible for the war, and I take great pleasure in 
responding, the Democratic party that ruled the country for thirty 
years. (Great applause.) And I say that, with the kindliest re- 
gard, with the utmost respect, with the greatest deference for the 
honest members of that party, who, whatever may have been 
their judgments before the rebellion broke out, saw by the flames 
of civil war the dangerous path they trod, and joined their life- 
long political opponents in the right path. They who now arro- 
gate to themselves the reputation and the name of the Democratic 



NO PEACE BEFORE VICTORY. 309 

party are the mere refuse that remained behind when the patriotic 
elements withdrew for the defense of the nation. (Great applause.) 
If, when numbering many of the great men, many of the good 
men, many of the patriotic men, many of the eminent statesmen 
of the country, wise in council and firm in action, they could not 
prevent the war, who will believe that this wretched remnant can 
stop the war? (Laughter and applause.) Why did the South 
rebel ? Because they had lost the majority of the North. There 
were a majority still at the North calling themselves Democrats, 
but they were Democrats that would not do what the Southern 
men desired. They committed themselves so far in favor of the 
Southern policy at the North that they lost the confidence of 
their fellow-citizens of the North, and with their confidence lost 
their votes ; and when they lost their votes, the Southern men 
could no longer depend upon them to protect their peculiar in- 
terest — they smote those that had been their humble servants for 
two generations past. (Applause.) They taught Southern Dem- 
ocrats that they could ask no humiliation which would not be 
yielded ; and that all who were not Democrats were Abolitionists 
— stood compurgators for every lie, and enabled them to imprint 
their hate and fear on the minds of the Southern people ; and now 
that they are spurned by their masters — now the wretched rem- 
nant of these discarded allies (laughter), these worn-out tools of 
a despotic power that has been driven to rebellion — these men 
venture to assume to lift the mighty mace of the old Democratic 
party, and say, " We can restore the broken and shattered Union 
that all combined could not preserve." (Laughter and applause.) 
Why, men of the United States, what is the rebellion? The 
Democratic party in arms in the South and in sympathy in the 
North. (Great applause.) What Democrat does not sympathize 
with his " Southern brethren ?" What Seymour does not speak 
of them as his "friends ?" (Applause.) They restore the Union 
by pacific means ! That means that they will stop the war. We 
need no one to tell "us that. They opposed it in its beginning ; 
they have maligned it to the present day ; they have embarrassed 
its progress ; they have vilified those that conduct it ; they have 
struggled against every measure essential to its conduct. Place 
them in power, would they not effectuate their own purpose, and 
let it drop ? Of course, peace is their policy ! 

Opposed to the war! Of course they are. James Buchanan, 



810 NO PEACE BEFORE VICTORY. 

and those that stood around him, and those that followed him, 
said, " It is unconstitutional." (Laughter.) Are they honorable 
men, and can they disavow the words of their chief; or, consider- 
ing the value the Democrats have always placed upon consistency 
when consistent with their interest, are they likely to evade the 
obligation that they have assumed, to treat it as unconstitutional, 
and therefore to stop it ? 

Who is their candidate for governor in Ohio? Is Vallandig- 
ham for restoring the Union by suppressing the rebellion? Who 
was their candidate in Connecticut ? The namesake of the New 
York Seymour, and, better than the namesake, an honest avower 
of the opinions which the other dishonestly concealed. He said 
that peace and not war, the arrest of bloodshed and not the sup- 
pression of rebellion, were the highest purposes that any statesman 
could proclaim for himself. Where have they elected a Legisla- 
ture that has not let the cloven foot appear? What say my 
friends from New Jersey, that I see around me — is Governor 
Parker for the war or against it ? Is the Legislature of New Jer- 
fey for or against peace resolutions ? Is the Legislature of Illinois 
for or against the war? Is the Legislature of Indiana for or 
against the war ? Where have the resolutions in favor of an im- 
mediate armistice come from ? Where have the resolutions pro- 
posing the meeting of a disloyal Convention in the city of Louis- 
ville come from? What great leading man, calling himself a 
Democrat and not now supporting the administration, avows him- 
self in favor of prosecuting the war to the bitter end, till the ban- 
ners of rebellion trail in the dust ? Let him be named — who is 
he? 

John Van Buren thought it would be worth while to go to 
Eichmond, and then to proclaim an armistice. And what is to 
be done with the armies beyond it? 

They all have profound, perfect confidence in an amnesty. An 
amnesty to men in arms, your equals on the battle-field, as often 
victorious as you are, inferior in numbers and resources, but 
nerved to desperation in a gigantic conflict ! What is an armis- 
tice but something for them to laugh at ? 

Peace ! Scarcely had Mr. Seward put forth another circular 
of ill-starred prophecies, than, as if to show you how far "our 
Southern brethren" are from dreaming of peace, they rush two to 
one upon Eosecrans and make him struggle to hold his ground 



NO PEACE BEFORE VICTORY. 311 

even. Judge Woodward, I suppose, would appear upon the bat- 
tle-field at Chattanooga with a laurel wreath on his head and an 
olive-branch in his hand (laughter) bidding back the foe from that 
terrific strife. Do they suppose, gentlemen, that the American 
people are born fools ? Do they suppose that their word, instiga- 
ted by the desire to attain power, will make the people believe 
what every man in all the rebel region, in every place of authori- 
ty, loudly denies. Vallandigham told us that every where in his 
progress through the nether regions he heard nothing but cries of 
peace and union. Why did he not name the man in authority 
that hinted at any terms that they were willing to accept or even 
to consider ? Did he not know from the temper of the people of 
this country, their earnest desire for peace, their weariness of the 
war, the exhaustion of their resources, the harrowing of their affec- 
tions by the desolation of the family circle, that any man who 
would go to the South and bring back terms of peace of any kind, 
even touching on and bordering upon humiliation, would receive 
the acclaim of two thirds of the American people. Would he be; 
now skulking over the border in Canada, or would he not rather 
be treading triumphantly over the heads of thousands of admiring 
fellow-citizens, as they hail him the harbinger of the jiteace that he 
proclaimed? His silence is the falsification of his wretched, in- 
vention. (Applause.) 

Somebody whispered over the Eappahannock the other day that 
peace was near. They found out the only officer that had been 
upon the banks that day, and language can not exceed the epi- 
thets of scorn and hatred with which he received the mere sug- 
gestion of peace — except upon terms that every Democrat is will- 
ing to receive to-morrow. (Laughter and applause.) The line of 
the Ohio, and the Mississippi, and the Potomac, the payment of 
the expenses of the war and damages for our outrages — who is 
ready for that here ? (" None," " None") — the surrender of West- 
ern Virginia. and her heroic loyalists? ("Never") — the yielding 
of Kentucky, that they have insolently called a member of their 
Confederacy, though no officer would dare set foot within her loy- 
al limits ? — the return of the disenthralled and rescued martyrs 
of Eastern Tennessee? (great applause) — now that daylight is 
dawning on North Alabama and North Georgia, the plunging them 
into hopeless and endless night — the return of Missouri to the dom- 
ination that undertook to drive her from the asms of the Union ! 



312 NO PEACE BEFORE VICTORY. 

These arc the terms, and the only terms any man has ever heard 
uttered above a whisper within the Southern country ? If Judge 
Woodward and his like mean that in the face of these terms they 
are ready to stop the war, then eternal will be the disgrace of 
Pennsylvania if, knowing that, she elect him for her chief magis- 
trate. (Applause.) If he do not mean to accept these, the only 
terms that have ever been uttered, then the people of Pennsylva- 
nia deserve to be placed in their own hospitals if they accept a 
man to regulate and govern their Commonwealth who says he is 
for peace and an armistice when these arc the only terms that are 
possible. (Applause.) An armistice for what purpose? To ar- 
gue with maniacs ? to debate on the field of battle ? or to realize 
the darling idea of the Democratic disunionists to palsy the arm 
of the United States, to arrest the impetus of its onward advance, 
to give the people in rebellion time to breathe, the men stricken 
to the knee time to gain their feet, the men whose resources are 
exhausted an opportunity to replace them, to break up the block- 
ade, to open their ports to foreign commerce, to give them the rec- 
ognition that could never be withdrawn, not merely of belliger- 
ents, but of parties holding a position competent to deal on equal 
terms with the United States. How long after an armistice would 
the recognition of the Southern Confederacy be delayed by En- 
gland or France? IIow would they remain idle during the con- 
ferences, how long delay to make their arrangements, not merely 
to mediate between powers, but to intervene in arms ? The mere 
proposal of the armistice reveals, the traitorous purpose that re- 
mains behind it. 

My friends, the reception that you have given our soldiers of 
the Army of the Potomac shows that you at least are for no arm- 
istice (great applause) — that you at least appreciate, without the 
necessity of argument from me, that an armistice is equivalent to 
the end of the war, and that the end of the war leaves the South 
independent. We can all now see where our opponents stand. 
They are opposed to every measure for conducting the war. Ah ! 
they arc opposed to the Conscription Act ; yet they do not volun- 
teer. IIow can we get soldiers ? They are opposed to the $300 
clause in it; yet they have generally paid the $300. (Laughter.) 
They are opposed to negro soldiers; yet negro soldiers are the 
poor man's substitute, who can not pay the $300. (Applause.) 
They are opposed to confiscation ; yet confiscation alone can 



NO PEACE BEFORE VICTORY. 313 

break the power of the leaders of Southern politics. (Applause.) 
They arc opposed to emancipation; yet emancipation alone can 
break the oligarchy that has brought on the war. (Great ap- 
plause, and " Three cheers for emancipation.") They are op- 
posed to discretionary arrests, which they call arbitrary arrests. 
They opposed them first because the President could not suspend 
the writ of habeas corpus — which was all true. They oppose them 
now, though Congress has suspended the writ of habeas corpus, 
which nobody denies their right to do. (Cheers and applause.) 
They opposed them, not because they were illegal, nor because 
they were arbitrary, but because, though legal, the discretion of 
the President might think rebel sympathizers suspicious charac- 
ters. (Cheers and applause.) 

They arc, then, opposed to all the means of conducting the 
war; they arc, then, in plain English, opposed to the farther con- 
duct of the war. That means that they arc in favor, whenever 
and wherever they can get in power, of throwing themselves 
against the government in the conduct of the war. They attempt- 
ed in Illinois to take the military power from the hands of a loyal 
governor. They have attempted every where to elect disloyal 
governors pledged to embarrass the United States in the enforce- 
ment of the laws. Seymour, knowing that the riot would embar- 
rass the government of the United States, stood paralyzed and 
powerless before his "friends." (Laughter.) They discussed the 
propriety of recalling from the army the contingents of the various 
States. The candidate for Governor of Maine, lately so over- 
whelmingly beaten by that patriotic State (applause), was asked 
whether, in the event of his election, he would recall from the 
armies the troops of Maine. Instead of repelling with indignation 
a question which was a humiliation to any man except a traitor, 
he said, "When Governor Seymour recalls the troops of New 
York, and the Governor of New Jersey recalls the troops of New 
Jersey, then I am ready to recall the troops of Maine." That 
marked him for a traitor; but he is mistaken in supposing that 
any regiment or any company of the troops of Maine would obey 
his illegal and treasonable order. (Great applause.) Doubtless 
he thought they would obey, and that order would have been is- 
sued the day after his election. The people took care that he 
should not have the opportunity. (Laughter and applause.) Let 
them get the control by any accident, by any thoughtlessness, by 



3U NO TEACE BEFORE VICTORY. 

any cowardice or timidity, by any weariness of the war or impa- 
tience of taxation, in the House of lleprescntatives, and instantly 
every war measure will be clogged in that House ; appropriations 
will be resisted; conditions will be annexed; the repeal of the 
laws that they have been assailing will be compelled by refusing 
supplies to the government ; the government will stand paralyzed 
in the presence of its armed enemies. 

If these are their purposes, then how are we to treat them and 
how arc we to conduct the government? In my judgment, fel- 
low-citizens of the United States, we all have a common interest 
in this great struggle, and what is the interest of Pennsylvania is 
the interest of Maryland. (Applause.) The line that so long has 
been of ill omen, I take it, was abolished by the day of Gettys- 
burg. (Great applause.) 

The current of events is daily sweeping away the only mark of 
disunion between Pennsylvania and Maryland — their internal 
recognition of slavery, or their refusal to recognize slavery. We 
stand together, and ought to stand together as one man in main- 
taining the integrity of the government, which more entirely 
crushes us than any other portion of the Confederacy if it fall in 
ruin about our ears. How, then, shall it be maintained ? I say, 
first, by tilling up the depleted ranks of the Army of the Poto- 
mac. (Great applause.) "Whether the government sec it or not, 
from the beginning of the war to this day there has been but one 
decisive point upon which one decisive battle could end the Avar, 
and that has been Virginia. It has never been a question of 
marching to Richmond; it has been a question of dispersing and 
destroying the army of General Lee, and that has never been dif- 
ficult to find. What the government has needed is a singleness 
of purpose, bending its unbroken energies to the annihilation of 
that army, and with it would crumble the Southern republic. 
(Applause.) Victories on other points are victories of detail ; 
victory on that point is decisive, final, and overwhelming. Peace 
will follow the destruction of that army; the war will endure un- 
til that army is destroyed. An armistice will not annihilate it ; 
a mediation will not paralyze it; no election of a Democrat will 
do any thing except accomplish its purposes, without bloodshed, 
for it. The war drags its length now along because a Presiden- 
tial election is only a year off, and the rebels of the South count 
on having their friends in office. ("Never, never.") If they 



NO PEACE BEFORE VICTORY. 315 

Lave to make terms, tlicy know the terms will be better with a 
Democrat than with men who arc devoted to the integrity, and 
the power, and the perpetuity of the republic, and therefore they 
mean, so long as there is a man left in the Southern country, and 
as much as in them lies, that there shall no semblance of peace 
appear until a Democrat mount the presidential chair. 

The way to peace, therefore, fellow-citizens, is over the battle- 
field, and there is no other path. If a lion lie in that path that 
you are afraid to meet, or one too powerful for you to meet, then 
give up the war. If you are unwilling to make that admission, 
then prosecute it with every energy that you can summon, of 
money and of men; with no hesitation ; no stinting; no critical 
spirit; no inclination to find fault: mourning errors, not casting 
them in the teeth of those in authority ; countenancing them with 
your earnest support, with the firm conviction that because there 
arc traitors in the North, every loyal man must double himself in 
strength, energy, and devotion. (Applause.) And when they 
menace you with insurrection here, tell them the sooner it begins 
the sooner it will be ended. (Great applause.) Let them under- 
stand that it is wholly immaterial to you whether they begin the 
civil war now, or two years hence, when, having under false pre- 
tenses crept into power, betrayed the nation, negotiated a hollow 
semblance of peace with the Southern Confederacy, and brought 
discord to every Northern door, the beginning of desolation, the 
introduction of civil war, the impossibility of keeping the residue 
of the States together, will be manifest to all men — the sooner the 
better. That party has always been magnificent in bullying — do 
not be frightened by their violence. (Applause.) 

But how else, gentlemen, shall you end the war? More than 
a million of men of the white race have volunteered their serv- 
ices in defense of American liberty against an oligarchy of slave- 
holders, and until recently their farms have been cultivated in 
quiet, their laborers have been untouched ; they have suffered by 
the blockade, they have suffered by invasion when our armies 
touched them; the great mass of their agricultural labor has gone 
on as regularly as in the halcyon days when cotton was king. I 
propose to invade the quiet realm of this discrowned king. (Ap- 
plause.) There arc four millions of men in those regions on our 
side. (Applause.) Who opposes the arming of them except the 
Democratic Conservatives? They are slaves. The President has 



310 NO PEACE BEFORE VICTORY. 

proclaimed them free. (Applause.) That paper confers no title ; 
it can only be made a title by arms. The negro's arm is ready to 
execute it. Why shall he not be allowed to do it ? (Applause.) 
" It is humiliating to white soldiers to serve in the same ranks with 
the negroes!" What say the Army of the Potomac to fifteen or 
twenty thousand to help them in the next great fight ? What 
said General Banks at Port Hudson ? What said General Gil- 
more at Fort Wagner? (Great applause.) Just what George 
Washington of the Kevolution said. (Applause.) Just what 
Andrew Jackson at New Orleans said. (Applause.) Just what 
Perry on Lake Erie saw. (Applause.) Just what Barney, with 
his negro men mingled in with his white men at Bladen sburg, 
saw, when other men ran away. Men are men in spite of the 
skin, and deeper than the skin. (Applause.) The first martyr 
of the Boston massacre in 1770 was a negro slave leading the 
white men. (Applause.) One of the heroes of the battle of 
Bunker Hill, living forever in the historic canvas of Trumbull, 
and living more immortally on the page of Bancroft, was a negro. 
(Applause.) No battle-field of the Kevolution that was not 
stained by their blood. The men of that day shrank at first, and 
came to it afterward. They formed no separate regiment; they 
mingled in with the rank and the platoon of their " white fellow- 
countrymen," as Andrew Jackson called them. (Applause.) 
From the days of the Kevolution to the days of the War of 1812, 
prejudice was silent before reason — national necessity and na- 
tional interest. It was only when the cotton aristocracy arose 
that common sense was driven from the minds of men. What 
do they fear half so much as a negro army marching through the 
cotton-field ? 

Gentlemen, without a negro army an attempt at emancipation 
is idle. The President has proclaimed emancipation. A procla- 
mation is a breath, or printer's ink. It dies of itself unless there 
be something living behind it. In point of law, no court will 
hold it a valid title to freedom ; that is my judgment as a lawj^er. 
I may be wrong, .but it is my judgment. If the negroes of the 
South arc to render us any material aid in the suppression of the 
rebellion, they must have a title to freedom that they will under- 
stand to be effectual, and they know that the proclamation is not 
effectual without something following it — a law of Congress and 
arms. They must farther be relieved from the idea, which has 



NO PEACE BEFORE VICTORY. 31 7 

been most unfortunately countenanced in certain high quarters, 
that after they have fought the battles of liberty, and. have aided 
us to win back our territory and consolidate our empire — that 
after an indefinite period of service upon public works in the ma- 
laria of the South, and on the canals of the Northwest, they arc to 
be banished from the land in which they were born and which 
they have aided to save. Banish, gentlemen, from your minds 
that humiliating and unworthy idea. (Applause.) Make up your 
minds that if they are to be soldiers, they are to be freemen, with 
the rights of free laborers, protected by the laws, recognized by 
the United States in their position, guaranteed the remedies of the 
courts of the United States, and armed and drilled to make their 
rights effectual. (Great applause.) And how shall that be done? 
On the theory of our "conservative" fellow-citizens? They say 
that, true, the South is in rebellion, but the State governments 
remain ; their governments arc in existence ; they have the right, 
the moment they lay down their arms, to be recognized by the 
United States as the only persons entitled to speak in behalf of 
the Southern States ; that the men now in authority arc the gov- 
ernors, the legislators, the judges, the magistrates, the sheriffs of 
the rebel States ; and that what the President should do is merely 
to offer an amnesty to screen individual offenders, and open his 
arms to receive those who have just now had the sword pointed 
at our bosoms, not merely as citizens obedient to the law, but as 
the representatives and constitutional governors of the loyal peo- 
ple of the rebel States. That is the Democratic theory of the res- 
toration of State government in the rebellious States. Where 
does that lead you ? Suppose it to be accomplished ; that is what 
they mean by " the Union as it was," with the old coalition of the 
Southern secessionist and the Northern Democrat to govern the 
country and divide the spoils. "The Union as it was" is their 
watch-cry. Do they mean that they will restore Western Vir- 
ginia to Eastern Virginia, bound hand and foot? Do they mean 
that they will recognize the fugitive Harris as Governor of Ten- 
nessee, and his scattered legislators as her Legislature ? Do they 
mean that they will recognize the men who assume to represent 
Kentucky in the Southern Confederacy as the proper representa- 
tives of the people of Kentucky ? Do they mean that they will 
bring back the fugitive Governor of Missouri? That would be 
" the Union as it was." That would be to recognize as the par- 



318 NO PEACE BEFORE VICTORY. 

ties entitled to govern the rebel States the rebels who now govern 
them. They are the people who, the Democrats say, are now en- 
titled, and only entitled, to be listened to. I pray you pause and 
consider gravely this great subject of the restoration of State gov- 
ernments under the Constitution. 

Are the American people ready for such a restoration as that? 
("No, no.") Is all that the Union has accomplished by a hund- 
red thousand of its dead sons, and hundreds of thousands of deso- 
late men and women at home mourning them, to recognize an in- 
solent pretense, which never for a moment has been a fact? If 
that be not so, then " the Union as it was," in the sense of the 
men who call for it, is an impossibility. (Applause.) They de- 
lude the people with vain words when they speak of " the Union 
as it was." Call the dead to life ; clothe his bones with his dis- 
solved flesh ; restore the soul to the soulless eyes of the thousands 
that have fallen martyrs upon the battle-field, and then you can 
restore the Union as it was. (Great applause.) The attempt is 
to begin a new civil war. "When you order back West Virginia, 
she will turn to you the points of her bayonets that are now on 
your side — and justly. When you recognize the butchers of 
East Tennessee for its republican government, the very ghosts of 
the murdered dead will lead the living men to battle against you. 
(Great applause.) When you talk of recognizing Kentucky and 
Missouri as States of the rebellion, you will be overwhelmed by 
ridicule that no man can stand up against. And that is "the 
Union as it was," in the words of the Democratic orators. Why 
will they perpetually come before the people with a lie in their 
mouth and delusion in their right hand ? 

" The Constitution as it is, and the Union as it was !" I am for 
the Constitution as it is, and that has altered the Union from what 
it was, and it will stay altered until eternity. (Great applause.) 
If the "conservative" gentlemen attain to power, it will stay alter- 
ed in fragments of shame to us and our posterity. If those who 
are now in power, and their successors, continue to retain the man- 
agement of the government on its present principles, it will con- 
tinue as it is, excepting so far as it is bettered, according to the 
Constitution as it is. (Applause.) And when I speak of the Con- 
stitution as it is, I mean as it came from the hands of George 
Washington, and Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison, not 
the wretched, crippled humpback that has been presented before 



NO PEACE BEFORE VICTORY. 319 

our eyes, the result of a cross between the Northern and the South- 
ern Democrat, an ill-begotten and shapeless monster that they have 
contrived for their purposes. Born without arms to use or legs 
to move with, and with a head that could only contrive mischief, 
and for every thing else was impotent ; but that Constitution, in 
the full vigor of its humanity, as it came from the hands of George 
Washington, adequate for every contingency of national life, 
speaking so plainly that those who run may read, and only the 
perversely blind can misinterpret. (Great applause.) Ay, the Con- 
stitution as it is, which says that Congress may call forth the mili- 
tia and use the armies of the United States to suppress insurrec- 
tion, and therefore the war is constitutional according to the letter 
of the Constitution as it is. That Constitution says that Congress 
shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of 
government, and it is under the Constitution as it is that the ar- 
mies now march to remove oppression and restore republican lib- 
erty. (Great applause.) And it is the Constitution as it is which 
declares that Congress shall have a right to pass all laws neces- 
sary and proper to carry into execution all the powers vested in 
it or any other department of the government ; and, therefore, 
whatever Congress may think in its judgment is necessary to re- 
store and guarantee republican forms of government in the rebel 
States, that law, according to the Constitution as it is, Congress 
may pass. (Great applause.) I am for exerting the power. I do 
not believe, my friends, that there is any arbitrary power vested 
any where in the government of the United States. I think the 
Constitution a provision made for the great necessities of national 
life by men who had just come out of a war of seven years, and 
anarchy of twelve years — wise men who knew the necessities of 
public life, and were not careful to bind the arms of the nation 
when its being is at stake ; and they provided that in the event 
of invasion or rebellion, or public danger, the writ of 'habeas corpus 
might be suspended. That meant, not that the President should 
be vested with an arbitrary and reckless power to arrest any man 
at his will and pleasure, irresponsible to the people and answer- 
able only to himself, but that the exigencies of national life, in 
the conduct of war, rendered it impossible to rest on the mere ju- 
dicial process for enforcing the laws. It is impossible to let the 
public safety depend upon the possibility of proving by legal evi- 
dence a participation with public enemies ; and, therefore, as the 



320 KO PEACE BEFORE VICTORY. 

lesser of two evils, as anarchy stood upon the one side, and discre- 
tionary power, under the guardianship of the people, temporarily 
vested in their chosen officer by them, was the only danger to be 
encountered upon the other — as the} r trust the President to de- 
termine who are in rebellion, and with the command of the ar- 
mies for its suppression upon the Held of battle, and to sacrifice 
the lives of thousands because they are dressed in gray uniform, 
and not as we arc, in blue, so they give him the discretionary 
power if in his judgment any one. Democrat or Republican, is 
dangerous to the public peace from any reason, he may not punish 
him, not try him by court-martial, not incarcerate him in the pen- 
itentiary, but he may arrest him to prevent mischief, and hold him 
till the danger is past. (Great applause.) That is the Constitu- 
tion as it is, and not as the Democrats construe it; and I am in 
favor of applying its powers to the letter and in the spirit, and to 
the bitter end of the war. 

I warned the government a year before they got an act of Con- 
gress to suspend the writ of habeas corpus^ that undertaking to do 
it without that authority would raise a storm that they could not 
meet. Gentlemen, no man deplores more than I do the accuracy 
of my reading of the tenderness of the American people for the 
forms of law. It has cost us, and we arc this day suffering from 
it, the State of New York, the State of Pennsylvania last year. 
the State of Ohio, the State of Indiana, and the State of Illinois. 
Now the power is upon the just basis of law. Rational men will 
yield obedience to it. None but traitorous conservatives will con- 
tinue to howl against it. (Great applause.) Every lo}*al man 
knows the President will not use it for oppression. 

I turn to consider that other great power and duty — the guar- 
antee oi^ republican governments to the States. That touches a 
question which ought to have been decided by the last Congress, 
which our friends are singularly timid about meeting. In my 
judgment, the sooner it is met the better, and the sooner the 
grounds upon which we act are ascertained, the better for all par- 
ties. I regret that, in dealing with the question of reorganizing 
the State governments, eminent gentlemen have used words which 
they, I think, will regret hereafter. They speak of the Southern 
men in arms as beino; alien enemies. The President has never so 
called them. Congress has never so called them. No law upon 
the statute-book so treats them. No official document has ever 



NO PEACE BEFORE VICTORY. 321 

hinted at that character. To call them alien enemies admits that 
their secession was effectual to give them the right of independ- 
ence in the eye of the world. It admits they are not traitors, but 
enemies. I say they are traitors and not enemies (applause) ; citi- 
zens under the law, against which they are illegally waging war, 
not foreigners waging a war upon equal terms with men who are 
foreigners to them. They war with the rope around their necks. 
(Applause.) Their victory can be decorated by no laurel in his- 
tory. Where she speaks of their deeds of valor, it will always be 
with a melancholy tear over the cause in which it was exhibited. 
It will always be accompanied with the bar sinister, to mark that 
the cause was illegitimate, the purpose iniquitous, the object un- 
just. You sanctify them when you call them alien enemies. 
Keep them to their real character — traitorous enemies of their 
country. (Applause.) And when the right of conquest is re- 
ferred to, as it has been by a very distinguished and a very able 
gentleman, to find out the methods of dealing with the reorgani- 
zation of the State governments, I desire to say that any man or 
any party that claims over the Southern States, after the insurrec- 
tion has been repressed — that is the legal language, gentlem<\n, of 
the statutes of the United States — any party that after the insur- 
rection shall have been repressed shall attempt to consider them 
a conquered people, that party will destroy itself, or, if it be suc- 
cessful, it will destroy republican liberty. It is a doctrine un- 
known to the Constitution of the United States; it is beyond the 
purview of American principles of government; it recognizes 
what no responsible statesman has heretofore recognized or ought 
ever to recognize, the possession of absolute, arbitrary, despotic 
power in the government over a portion of the States as the result 
of its military operations to suppress an insurrection. It places 
the government above the law to enforce the law ! The law 
speaks differently; the Constitution speaks differently. Under 
them both we have to act. We owe it to the wisdom of our fore- 
fathers to recognize that they have left our hands as free to deal 
with rebellion as wisdom will sanction, and every power in our 
hands which tends to accomplish the object. We must deal with 
it in their mode. The States are, by rebellion, extinguished and 
become Territories ! says a very distinguished and eloquent states- 
man. Then how can it be that the Constitution requires Congress 
to guarantee to every State a republican form of government, if 

X 



322 NO PEACE BEFORE VICTORY. 

the destruction of a republican form of government in the State 
converts it into the condition of a Territory, and subjects it to the 
arbitrary power of Congress ? They did not so deem it. They 
regarded the States as continuing, perpetual elements of our 
Union, and their citizens always beneath the Constitution. But 
they draw the broad and marked discrimination between the in- 
"dividual rights of the citizen, the existence of the State as a body 
politic, and its capacity by reason of its want of organization to 
exert its political powers. If a man in South Carolina comes to 
Philadelphia, no lawyer can plead " alien enemy" to his suit. If 
I go to South Carolina, I have all the rights of a citizen of South 
Carolina. The officers of the United States, their postmasters, 
their collectors, their marshals, are still provided for by law, and 
some exist ; the statutes are still upon the statute-books ; it is still 
illegal to import any thing within those limits without paying the 
duties; the courts exist wherever the President names judges. 
They are in every particular still under the laws of the United 
States, described on their statute-books, nowhere except as States 
of this Union. When men are to be tried for treason, they can 
only be tried in the courts of the United States, according to the 
laws of the United States, by juries summoned according to the 
laws of the United States, under the Constitution of the United 
States. But these clauses do not fetter the hands of the Govern- 
ment, as stupid Conservatives say when they quote the Constitu- 
tion to prohibit the marching of an army to remove opposition 
to the execution of the laws. "When the opposition is dispersed, 
then the reign of the courts is restored and the day of punishment 
may come. But with reference to their political franchises, the 
wisdom of our forefathers has placed them a step farther off. Our 
"Conservative" friends are altogether too eager to have their 
votes for the next Presidential contest when they propose to re- 
gard the existing authorities in the rebel States as entitled to be 
recognized as the authorities of the States within the Union. 
That, doubtless, would be very convenient if they could get the 
votes of half a dozen of the Southern States, and make up their 
deficiency of votes in the North in that way, and thereby elect 
their "Conservative" President. Fortunately, the law is not so 
unwise. There can be no electors of President from any State, 
unless there be a government organized in it recognized by the 
government of the United States, whose officers have sworn obe- 



NO PEACE BEFORE VICTORY. 323 

dience to the Constitution of the United States. (Applause.) Till 
that, there can be no authority any where exerted. Do those men 
now in authority in the Southern States constitute the State gov- 
ernments under the Constitution that they repudiate, that they say 
is annulled, that they have taken up arms to destroy ? On the 
contrary, the very first act in secession was not to carry their ter- 
ritory from beneath the laws of the United States, but to tear 
down their own State governments and institute others. Those 
that they tore down were republican governments in the sense of 
the Constitution. Those that they have established are a mob in 
the form of the government, and the rebellion organized to exe- 
cute its purpose, entitled to recognition by nobody. To partici- 
pate in their government is, by the laws of the United States, the 
crime of high treason. Their governor, by merely accepting his 
position, renders himself liable to trial, conviction, and hanging. 
Every officer of theirs is aiding to promote the war. They are a 
band of traitors, usurping rights over citizens of the United States. 
The armies of the United States move to strike that power from 
their hands, and restore it to loyal men ; and in doing that, the 
only arbiter of what government shall be recognized, the only 
arbiter of who shall be treated as a governor, or a legislator, 
or a judge of a rebel State, is the United States in Congress as- 
sembled. (Applause.) Till they shall recognize another govern- 
ment, there is no government. In the absence of a State govern- 
ment, there must be either anarchy, or a legislative and executive 
power somewhere. Those that have abdicated can no longer be 
the government of the State. The right and the duty to guaran- 
tee a republican government is vested in Congress. Congress is 
therefore charged to take every measure that is necessary to re- 
store republican government. Pending the interregnum, Congress 
is the only legislative power for the State, the President is the 
•only executive power for the State. They can, under a provision 
which I have already quoted, pass any law in their judgment nec- 
essary to consolidate the republican government which they are 
about to establish, and they have the sole and absolute discretion 
of determining who shall and who shall not be recognized as the 
government of the State. Nay, gentlemen, so far is this from be- 
ing mere theory or a fanciful disquisition, it is now the policy on 
which the administration has acted. John Letcher was playing 
governor at Richmond when the President of the United States 



324 NO PEACE BEFORE VICTORY. 

recognized Picrpont as the Governor of Western Virginia, and the 
Senate of the United States and the House of Representatives ad- 
mitted their representatives to the floors of Congress. When men 
speak of any other mode of adjustment, they fly in the face of the 
actual conduct of the government. It is not my theory ; it is the 
policy of the administration. They have already solved the prob- 
lem ; they have already pointed out their course of action ; they 
have already declared their interpretation of the Constitution to 
be that which I have put upon it, that they arc acting as the 
guarantors of republican government in States where Republican 
government has ceased to exist, and that they alone arc at liberty 
to re-establish it, that they alone arc entitled to determine who 
arc the legitimate possessors of power, and that they havo done in 
the case of Western Virginia. Had John Letcher been the Gov- 
ernor of Virginia, and merely an erring mortal, going a little too 
far in the tracks of treason, as our "Conservative" opponents 
would lead you to suppose, then there could be no recognition of 
any other State government anywhere within the borders ofVir- 
• in i;i. The President and Congress did not so treat him. They 
treated him as the head of the Richmond mob; they treated him 
as the leader of the Virginia rebels; they treated him as a traitor 
who had [tailed down his own State government, and then under- 
took to usui-j) illegal authority over his fellow-citizens. It is in 
that light, and that alone, that he stands before the government 
of the United States. 

Now, gentlemen, let us sec how this will work out, and whether 
this is not the safer law and the only one possible path for us who 
mean to accomplish something practical, permanent, and blessed 
by the suppression of the rebellion to pursue. The President has 
proclaimed the abolition of slavery. (Applause.) If it rests on 
that proclamation, let us trace it out a little. Suppose the war to 
lie ended, and our "Conservative" friends to be in power, and 
Mr. John Letcher to be recognized as the Governor of Virginia, 
and Mr. Bonham as the Governor of South Carolina, and so on 
through the rebellious States; the existing Legislatures remain; 
the existing distribution of political power remains; the existing 
Southern courts remain; the existing organization of the South- 
ern militia remains; the existing debts, the war debts that they 
have incurred to fight us, remain. They will be at liberty to as- 
sume, as most of them I believe have already done, the Confedor- 



NO PEACE BEFORE VICTORY. 325 

ate debt of the rebel States. That, therefore, becomes a perma- 
nent burden upon the people of the United States in common with 
our State debts and with our national debt. Those men thus re- 
instated in power by our act arc the only persons that can have a 
word to say on the subject of whether the proclamation is or is 
not valid as law. What do you suppose the judges of South 
Carolina would say on that point if a negro were to claim his 
freedom under it? It makes it at once a dead letter. It is alto- 
gether frivolous; I say farther, gentlemen, it is something very 
much like a cowardly evasion when men who wish to avoid that 
inevitable consequence of that form of reconstructing the govern- 
ments in the rebel States say, " If the proclamation is valid, it 
will be held valid by the courts; and if it is void, it can not be 
made valid." Neither proposition is of the courts of the rebel 
States in the hands of the true. If it were as valid as any law 
upon the statute-book of the United States, if it remain a mere 
proclamation and be left to the tender mercies of rebel judges, it 
will be annulled and disregarded, for they arc the only judges of 
what is the law of their own State, and therefore when you shall 
have turned the negro free, if he should attempt to assert his 
freedom, their process will hang him; their process will shoot 
him ; their process will hunt him down by the bloodhound ; their 
process will drag him backward into slavery. If he attempt to 
rebel and show himself too strong, they will call on the govern- 
ment of the United States to send the Army of the Potomac to 
reduce him to slavery under the laws of the States; and a "Con- 
servative President would only be too happy to have the oppor- 
tunity of manifesting in that manner that he was opposed to 
'piegro equality. 1 " 

Neither is the other hypothesis true that if it be invalid it can 
not be helped. As it now stands, in my judgment the Suprem i 
Court of the United States will not recognize it as law ; the 
United States courts can not enforce it. But it can be helped by 
an act of Congress under its power to legislate for the States pend- 
ing the execution of the guarantee ; it can be helped by an act 
of Congress in the execution of its guarantee of republican govern- 
ment if it considers that the continuance of these men in slavery, 
and the power of the masters over them, is incompatible with a 
permanent consolidation of republican institutions in the States. 
(Applause.) That is a political, and not a j udicial question. That 



326 NO PEACE BEFOEE VICTORY. 

will be decided by the Congress of the United States and the 
President of the United States, and the courts of the United States 
will follow the judgment of Congress and the President. Make it 
an act of Congress, and then you have made it a law. Place on the 
statute-book judicial process, and then you have given the freed- 
men the courts of the United States to protect them against the local 
tyranny. Make it a law of the United States, and then the armies 
of the United States stand, not to return them to their masters, 
but to repel their masters from them under the law. (Applause.) 
Let the Conservative howl; this is the Constitution as it is; 
this is the execution of the guarantee that George Washington 
placed in the Constitution ; this is the condition to which the 
States by rebellion have brought themselves within the legiti- 
mate, express legislative power of Congress, to deal with them 
and their property, and the organization of their society, on such 
principles as Congress shall judge to be not incompatible with the 
permanence of republican government. It is frivolous to say that 
we can arm a million of men to prostrate half a million in the 
dust, taking away precious life, to restore republican government, 
but we can not restore freedom to slaves in the same cause. Life 
is protected against illegal aggression in the Constitution as well as 
property, even of the most unquestionable character. Life is not 
less sacred than slavery. Can we destroy life to repel from pow- 
er those who have usurped a power to create unrepublican forms 
of government in the rebel States ? and are we to be told, if Con- 
gress shall be of the opinion that the continuance of these men in 
slavery is an insuperable barrier to the restoration of republican 
government, if they shall be of opinion that the resources of the 
government are not enough to put down the rebellion without 
their aid, if they are convinced that they can not get their aid 
without promising and securing to them freedom, and that they 
can never be free unless their wives and their children, their old 
and their young, are free with them — are we to be told that the 
power of Congress is limited with reference to that species of 
property — that it must stand a perpetual obstacle to free govern- 
ment? Why, fellow-citizens, it is to construe the Constitution in 
the interest of the rebellious faction that by coalition with North- 
ern Democrats has governed the country to its ruin for thirty 
years, to adopt it. (Applause.) They have always been the strict 
constructionists. George Washington was the rational construe- 



NO PEACE BEFORE VICTORY. 327 

tionist. They have been always in favor of tying the govern- 
ment of the United States hand and foot, because they saw that it 
had strong feet to trample down rebellion, and long arms to reach 
it. (Applause.) Their rebellion has, I think, removed the cob- 
webs from before the peoples' eyes. They now begin to see the 
policy that lay at the bottom of the strict construction of the 
Democratic school. They begin to understand that they were 
barriers thrown up to protect the institution of slavery. They 
begin to understand that they were the deliberately prepared bul- 
warks for a premeditated rebellion. They now begin to see that 
James Buchanan was only repeating the lesson he had heard from 
Jefferson Davis when he said there was no power to invade a 
State, no power to make war against a State, no power to coerce 
a State ; the States must be left to their good pleasure, to do ill 
if they so pleased. That was not the Constitution that George 
Washington framed, nor the one that the early men of the repub- 
lic acted upon, nor is it the one that we now, in the presence of a 
great national necessity, will act upon. We will restore it to its 
power, and act upon that. Oh, but they say, if you refuse to rec- 
ognize the existing State governments, they will refuse to lay 
down their arms. Nobody but a fool expects them to lay down 
their arms, till they are knocked from their hands. (Great ap- 
plause.) They are out of Eastern Tennessee now. How did they 
get out? They are out of Western Virginia. How came they 
out? They are out of one third of the residue of Virginia. How 
came they out? If the re-enforcements pour on rapidly enough, 
they will soon be out of Georgia and Alabama as well as Missis- 
sippi. (Applause.) Where would a " Conservative" President go 
to find the Governor of Mississippi or Louisiana now ? When we 
are done with the rebellion, there will be no governments, even in 
form, to recognize, if the President do his duty. (Applause.) The 
traitors will be hunted from their hiding-places. If the President 
executes his duty, the first men to be sought out and arrested are 
those who have held civil office in the rebellious States. He will 
seize on the governor first, and the constable last, in the order of 
their precedence, and, when he shall send them to jail, he will tell 
them not to stand upon the order of their going, but to go at once, 
and go quickly (laughter and applause), and then the Conserva- 
tives will be in great trouble, for there will be no government, 
rebel or loyal. What are we to do then? The execution of the 



328 NO PEACE BEFORE VICTORY. 

military powers of the President brings the States back to where 
I say they are by law — people forming a State without a political 
organization, called State government. That they can only re- 
ceive under the auspices of Congress, and in accordance with the 
forms and by the laws that it, and it alone, shall see fit to pre- 
scribe. (Applause.) When proper provision shall have been 
made for these things, then there will be something else necessary, 
for to all liberties a guarantee is necessary. Our great forefathers 
had none of our foolish, sentimental belief in the impeccability of 
the people — not a bit of it. They thought that, as a general thing, 
and in the long run, the great mass and body of the people were 
wise, and liberal, and honest, and would conduct their affairs well ; 
but they knew that bad men could get into power ; that great 
masses of men could be inflamed by passion ; that injustice might 
be perpetrated by mobs as well as by a tyrant ; that a republican 
government could be overthrown and a despotic government 
erected ; that a minority, with superior arms or superior intelli- 
gence, could trample down a majority disarmed and out of pos- 
session of the government. They foresaw, as the pages of the 
Federalist will prove to any man who has read it, when they 
framed the Constitution, exactly what we now sec with our eyes 
in these days of blood and carnage, that a great interest acting to- 
gether as a unit, covering a great region of country, antagonistic 
to the other interests of the countiy, might combine, and by for- 
eign aid, and the possession of the local governments, create a great 
rebellion, overthrow the republican government, and establish 
something that was not republican ; and therefore they created 
the power to suppress insurrection, and imposed the duty on Con- 
gress to guarantee republican governments. We, unlike those 
who have to deal with most great rebellions, without hurting any 
one great permanent legitimate interest of society, can strike from 
under the faction its only foundation. Ilcrctoforc civil strifes 
have arisen between the poor and the rich ; those who have, and 
those who have not, property ; between those who arc in power 
and those who are out of power, to acquire what they have not. 
Those are revolutions difficult to be dealt with. It is difficult to 
get at the cause and to remove it. You can not destroy property. 
It is difficult to change the form of a political organization. Here 
the foundation is a social institution — the right by law, contrary 
to the law of nature, for one man to hold another in servitude. 



NO PEACE BEFORE VICTORY. 329 

You cut up the roots of the rebellion by striking the shackles 
from the slave. (Prolonged applause.) IIow shall it be done? 
Congress passed two laws in 1862 authorizing the President to 
use as many persons of African descent as he might see fit, to aid 
him, organized in such manner as he might think best, to suppress 
the rebellion. The President now, late in the day — in my judg- 
ment much later than it ought to have been — has commenced in 
earnest the organization of the negro regiments from the slave ele- 
ment of the country. The " Conservatives," North and South, 
cry aloud against it. No man who does not mean to aid the 
rebellion will lay a straw across the track of that march. (Ap- 
plause.) We are informed "slaves can not be soldiers !" There 
is mighty little of the slave left in the man who has a musket 
upon his shoulder. (Laughter and applause.) " Slaves can not 
be soldiers." They who have taken leave of absence are likely 
to keep it. " Slaves can not be soldiers." Then make them free 
by law of Congress, and let us stop the argument. (Applause.) 
"You can not take private property for public use without com- 
pensation." No ; but every man in the United States owes mil- 
itary service to the United States paramount to all laws of the 
States ; and if the negro owes the service, the master has no right 
to claim pay for it. (Applause.) The burden passes with the prop- 
erty. The master has been voting upon the negro's personality 
for eighty years. We will let the negro fight a little now upon 
his personal it}'. (Laughter and applause.) But it is said, white 
soldiers will not fight in the same ranks with the negroes. Where 
have the soldiers said they did not want their aid ? Where have 
they turned their backs upon an enemy because a negro stood 
facing the same enemy? What officers have thrown up their 
commissions because they are humbled by being in the same 
ranks? Are they rather not rational enough to say that the mus- 
ket upon the shoulder of the negro elevates him to the dignity of 
man ? The Federalist, in its wisdom, foresaw this day in some- 
thing of its brightness when it said that commotions might make 
a race of unhappy beings emerge to the level of manhood. (Ap- 
plause.) But we are told, "You will disorganize your armies." 
Was Rosecrans's army disorganized four days ago because ne- 
groes had been introduced into the army? " The Union men of 
the loyal slave States will be disgusted, and they will rebel." 
Where ? Western Virginia has abolished slavery since this sys- 



#30 NO PEACE BEFORE VICTORY. 

tern has been initiated and proclaimed. (Applause.) Missouri 
lias passed her act of emancipation, made gradual by her Copper- 
heads, because her loyal men would otherwise have made it per- 
emptory and immediate. In Maryland, that surrounds your cap- 
ital, and more than once has felt the tramp of the invader — such 
is the unanimous sentiment of her people, that her governor has 
been compelled to hasten up his lagging opinions and proclaim 
himself in favor of emancipation — and a Convention next year to 
effect it ; and the only question is whether the enlistment of the 
slaves will leave any to emancipate. (Laughter and applause.) 
"Who has rebelled? Who that was loyal to the government has 
become disloyal ? Somewhere, where the negro fever has been 
lurking under the skin, of course it has broken out ; but the fever 
was there before; it only required a hot day to bring it out. 
(Laughter.) No sound loyal man has a symptom of that in him. 
"But there will be servile insurrections, outrages upon women, 
massacres of masters, burning down of houses, destruction of great 
regions of country," every thing that the Apocalypse describes 
before the last day. That mass of frccdmen has done no such 
iniquity any where. They have submitted with more than angel- 
ic patience to the torments of their masters, till the United States 
has given them an opportunity of freedom ; and then, murdering 
no one, outraging no one, insulting no one, they have marched 
quietly through the streets of Baltimore to the negro camp, and 
undertaken the obligations of the military oath. (Applause.) 
The guarantee that you want is, enough of them — that is all. 
Organize one hundred thousand, or two hundred thousand, or 
three hundred thousand, and plant them as a beacon-light and a 
tower of strength in the middle of the Southern county and that, 
with an act of Congress, makes freedoms not only law, but fact ; 
and till that is done, the President's proclamation is not worth the 
paper on which it is written. (" That's so," and cheers.) Your 
declaration that you are going to set the slaves free is a mere de- 
lusion ; their rushing to join the army is merely preparing their 
necks for the halter ; the recognition of the existing rebel authori- 
ties is merely handing them over to the stake and the torture. 
Humanity, Christianity, the highest principles, the most ordinary 
honor, combine in crying shame on thus complicating the fate of 
that innocent people with yours, if you do not mean to make their 
fate also yours. (Applause.) Let them stay at home, doomed to 



NO PEACE BEFORE VICTORY. 33X 

the inexorable lash and eternal labor, ratlier than drag them out 
to incur the deadly hate and hostility of their masters, and then 
return them defenseless to their tender mercies. There may be 
execrable humiliations yet connected with the adjustment of this 
great revolution, but the pen of the historian will steep itself in 
gall of equal bitterness for no other act as for calling negroes into 
the field, and abandoning them afterward to slavery. That, fel- 
low-citizens, is one of those steps which, once taken, can never be 
recalled. "The Union as it was" can never be after that step. 
But when the negroes shall be organized, armed, disciplined, dec- 
orated with the uniform of the United States, and taught the ma- 
noeuvres of the field, an act of Congress which proclaims them and 
their like free will be an act that will be respected. Then the 
United States will have acquired four millions of people in the 
rebel States whose liberty depends upon the perpetuity of the 
Union, and for the first time you will have a guarantee such as 
you never had before. You will have converted the element of 
your weakness into the clement of your strength. You will have 
wrested the sword from your antagonist, and will wield it over his 
defenseless head. Your friends are camped eternally among them, 
and they are on their good behavior. If they attempt to reduce 
them to slavery, the law calls the men of the North to vindicate 
the right they have conferred, not to meet in arms the men they 
had previously armed against the Southern rebellion. That is the 
legal way that that problem will be accomplished. Then, if we 
hear the wretched cry, coming from the lowest of the populace, 
chiefly that which floods us from abroad, about negro equality and 
the intrusion of negro labor upon white labor, mention to them 
one or two things which may even meet their intellect. In the 
first place, if any body is afraid of negro equality, he is not far 
from it already (laughter) ; in the next place, if God has made him 
equal, and only accidental circumstances have made him unequal, 
you can not help it ; and if He has made him unequal by the laws 
of nature, and independnetly of accidental circumstances, then no 
amount of demagoguism, no amount of abolition enthusiasm can 
make one hair black or white, or add an inch to his stature, intel- 
lectual or moral. When you talk about expelling him from the 
country, you talk simple craziness. Expel four millions of people ! 
Where are the ships? Where is the land that will receive them? 
Where are the people that will pay the taxes to remove them ? 



332 NO PEACE BEFORE VICTORY. 

Who will cultivate the deserted regions that they leave? Who 
will indemnify King Cotton for the loss of his subjects ? (Laughter 
and applause.) What will the cotton-planter do — represented to 
you as a gentleman who, like Apollyon in the Pilgrim's Progress, 
eats and spouts nothing but fire ; but you will find a little com- 
mon sense at the bottom of it all. Let him understand that the 
negro is free, and that he has to deal with him as a free laborer, 
or let cotton go uncultivated, and he will hasten to pay him wages, 
and the negro will be glad to receive them. (Applause.) But he 
will run up North, say this same class of people, and compete 
with us for our labor. Who ever heard of a free negro running 
away from where he was free? Who ever heard of a negro run- 
ning at all, if he could help it? (Laughter.) They don't run 
from Maryland to Pennsylvania — why from South Carolina to 
Louisiana? "But they are lazy and idle." Those who want to 
keep them as slaves say so; nobody else. We in Maryland have 
more experience on that subject than any body else. We have 
about 200,000 negroes ; one half of them are free, the other half 
arc slaves. We find that the slaves are lazier than the free ne- 
groes. We find that the free negroes have schools, educate their 
children, lay up money in the Savings' Banks, and do not crowd 
the court of my friend Judge Bond as much as the class of white 
people from across the water. Every body talks against them 
who wants to keep them down below the level of the slave. It is 
the interest of the people who own the slave property with whieh 
they come in competition to do it ; but when there was an attempt 
made a few years ago to expel them from Maryland, the leading 
landholders and ncgroholdcrs protested against it, and stopped it 
because it would destroy the agricultural industry of the State. 
If we in Maryland did not want to lose one half of our agricul- 
tural population, how will they of South Carolina live if they lose 
it all? (Applause.) Gentlemen, necessity is a teacher that we 
in this country have yet to learn to respect. We have been in 
the habit of doing what seemed to us good in our own eyes ; fre- 
quently it was very bad. We have to learn, and our Southern 
brethren have to learn more bitterly than we, that sometimes peo- 
ple have to do what they can do, and not what they prefer to 
do. When the Southern master is taught that the question is not 
whether he will have the negro free or slave, but whether he will 
have him free or no cotton, he will take the negro free. (Ap- 



NO PEACE BEFORE VICTORY. 333 

plause.) No rebel State will vote to emancipate their slaves. 
Do not be under any such delusion for an instant. They mean 
to hold them as long as they can. No rebel State will vote to 
come back to the Union — rest assured of it — as long as there is 
an army in the field ; but state the question, Do you prefer, now 
belonging to the United States, to govern yourselves or be gov- 
erned by Congress? and they will hasten to reorganize a proper 
State government. So with reference to the negro : if you ask 
them whether they would rather have the negro free or slave, 
they will say unanimously " slave ;" but if you say " the negro 
shall be free ; will you pay him wages as a workman, or will you 
not have cultivators for your fields," they will say, " We will pay 
him wages;" and that is no speculation cither, gentlemen. At 
this moment large plantations in Louisiana arc cultivated under 
bargains made between the master and the slave for a reasonable 
compensation. To such an extent has the depletion of the slave 
population of the western shore of Maryland gone, that some of 
the most violent secessionists have gone to their slaves and of- 
fered them higher wages than heretofore they would have had to 
pay white men if they would stay at homo and not enlist. (Ap- 
plause.) 

Gentlemen, the world moves palpably to the eye in this latter 
day, and the man who supposes he can stand still in the midst of 
the great moral movement of this world might as well plant his 
feet firmly in the mud and say, "The world may circle around 
the sun, but I will not go with it." You arc parts of the current, 
and are borne on with it against your will. Day after day you 
accept what yesterday you would have scouted, and the day be- 
fore would have thought craziness. Men's interests arc some- 
times blinded by their passions, but when their passions are chas- 
tised their interest resumes the supremacy. Crush the rebellion, 
and cotton will be again cultivated. Crush the rebellion, and the 
question of labor will revive. Crush the rebellion, and the inter- 
ests of the planter will be a matter for his consideration. Crush 
the rebellion, and he will make the best terms he can with his 
emancipated and armed fellow-countrymen of the African race. 
(Applause.) And, on the other hand, if this wretched, cross-eyed, 
and double-faced conservatism (laughter) shall get into power ; if 
the men who delude the people, and lie to their own consciences 
where they are not dishonest, shall crown themselves again, as for 



334 NO PEACE BEFORE VICTORY. 

thirty years they have hitherto crowned themselves for evil, with 
the powers of the government of the United States, and shall pro- 
ceed to act on their view of the Constitution, and recognize the 
rebel leaders as the masters of their loyal fellow-citizens, whom 
now for two long years they have illegally oppressed, restore them 
to the seats of power, admit into the Congress of the United States 
their representatives, leave the conduct of the local elections un- 
der their dictation, and allow their armies to stand guard over the 
ballot-box, and their laws to regulate who shall elect and who 
shall be elected, and their Constitution to determine how the bal- 
ance of power shall be distributed between the white regions of 
the State and the slave regions of the State — then, I say, although 
the Union may be restored in that way, it will be at the loss of 
all the fruits of the war ; there will be no permanent peace ; it 
will be a treacherous and shifting sand on which no permanent 
structure Can be laid, over which no great march for improvement 
can pursue its unobstructed way. We merely restore to power 
those that have rebelled, to subjugate the North by the old coali- 
tion to abide their time till undying hate, still fostered and kept 
alive by the perpetuation of political power, shall awake amid 
some great national collision from abroad ; to leave our ranks in 
the day of battle, to lift the banner of rebellion in the midst of 
national disaster, with combined armies tear in pieces the republic 
that they are now vainly struggling to overthrow. I say that 
now, when our armies have advanced to the very heart of the 
Confederacy, let us press it home and rest nowhere. (Great ap- 
plause.) Our armies now gird all the rebellion ; the leaders of 
the rebellion begin to feel the inward tortures of conscious guilt, 
and they begin to feel the searching throes of the fire that we are 
heaping around them. Press forward only a little more, and they 
will be consumed in the conflagration that they themselves have 
created. (Applause.) We have now possession of the Mississip- 
pi ; we have possession of all west of it substantially ; we have all 
of Mississippi in our possession ; we have nearly all Louisiana in 
our possession ; we have all of Tennessee in our possession ; we 
have one half of the State of Virginia in our possession ; we have 
one full half of all the population that rebelled in our possession ; 
we have crippled their resources, in great measure disorganized 
or paralyzed their armies; we have still fighting to do, but we 
have less of it to do than we had a year ago ; and now, with one 



NO PEACE BEFORE VICTORY. 335 

combined and energetic effort, if with our feet we can stamp down 
tbe " conservative" revolutionary reaction at home, and launch as 
a bolt of fire upon the enemy our unbroken ranks, a year more 
and possibly we shall begin to see the end of the war. (Ap- 
plause.) But, gentlemen, rest assured that they who are ready 
to make peace first will not dictate the terms of it ; rest assured 
that they who are determined to see no end of the war, excepting 
under the crown of victory, will wear that crown. (Applause.) 
It is tenacity, it is endurance, it is patience, it is the resolution 
never to stop fighting until your enemy yields, that constitute the 
great qualities of nations born to rule. We now are on trial be- 
fore the nations of the world. If the sword drop from our wea- 
ried hands, they will say, "Go, ye nation of shop-keepers and 
weavers ; work, navigate, be ingenious, build houses, weave fab- 
rics ; make arms for the rest of the world, leave other men to bear 
and wield them ; you are not the legitimate descendants of the 
men who wrested their independence from .the power of Great 
Britain." Maintain your power intact, scout down and stamp 
down any man who speaks of any terms of peace at all. (Great 
applause.) Tell him that this is no foreign war to be terminated 
by a treaty ; it is a domestic rebellion to be stamped in the earth, 
and the only treaty is the Constitution of the United States as it 
is and as we construe it (great applause) ; the only privileges of 
the rebels are the laws of Congress as we have passed them and 
will execute them over them till they submit ; their only right is 
to a legal trial and mercy afterward, if the President sees fit. 
(Applause.) They are not alien enemies, they are traitors whose 
lives are forfeited. When we deal with them, gentlemen, on 
these terms, they will understand that they have begun a work 
which they know now is not easy, they will then know is impos- 
sible ; they will find that they set out to avert death in old age, 
and they encountered suicide at the threshold ; they will begin to 
understand what might there slumbers in the heart of the Amer- 
ican people, wielded by wisdom, backed by energy and resolu- 
tion, and by that instinct which is never wanting to any people 
destined to greatness — the instinct of power that leads them 
never to yield as long as a man or a dollar remain, as long as 
there is an acre to be defended or an inch to be restored to their 
domination. Never allow the god Terminus to recede across 
the boundary of any State — let that be the watchword of the 



336 NO PEACE BEFORE VICTORY. 

American republic. Then it will be as great, as glorious, as be- 
neficent, as long-lived, yea, more long-lived than the immortal ex- 
ample of republican government, the Eome of the ancient world. 
On these terms we shall stand respected before the nations of the 
world. 

Every despot in Europe curled his lips when the rebellion broke 
out at the feeble, wretched, vacillating, dilapidated government 
that undertook to restore its authority over this immense and 
magnificent region. When the men of the North and of the loy- 
al slave States commenced to develop their power, they paused 
in their determination to recognize, they paused in their more than 
half-formed resolution to intervene and throw the weight of their 
arms on the other side. When our arms were at a low ebb a year 
and a half ago, Louis Napoleon thought it a convenient opportu- 
nity to march in and take possession of Mexico— to limit our ex- 
pansion. He would not do it to-day ; and, by the blessing of 
God, when this rebellion shall be suppressed, I take it there is a 
long account to settle with two great nations of the European 
world. (Long-continued applause.) I never said a word, my 
friends, to any body in this house, on that subject before, but I 
knew what I thought, and I guessed what every American 
thought. (Great applause.) The sailing of the Alabama and 
the Florida — the organization of companies to supply arms to 
shoot down our brethren — the organized attempt to break through 
the blockade with every material of war and every comfort of life 
for our enemies ; under the guise of a neutrality violated at every 
step — the moral power and force given to the rebellion by the 
countenance of the governments of France and England, whose 
fear of the consequences alone prevented formal intrusion into our 
domestic quarrel — the thorn in our side of Nassau — the prying 
eye that watched our every movement at Halifax — the long thorn 
that France has planted in our side in Mexico — these things fes- 
ter and rankle till the day of account. (Great applause.) I used 
to be opposed to foreign conquest, opposed to the acquisition of 
that territory, opposed to foreign war. I have learned something 
in two years. I take it that the sailing of the Alabama has unset- 
tled the Northeastern frontier. (Applause.) I take it that the in- 
trusion of a monarchical power into Mexico has made us feel that 
Mexico is a republic, and our safety requires its expulsion. (Tre- 
mendous cheering.) I take it that we feel uncomfortably bound 



NO PEACE BEFORE VICTORY. 337 

in by the Bahama Islands, and that hereafter Nassau will not be 
the pirate's nest, to prey on us. (Great applause.) "When this 
giant shall have recovered the use of all his faculties, not now like 
a man cloven from head to foot, and wielding scarce any of his 
native power, but restored to his whole manhood, united in his ab- 
solute vigor, I look with glorying to the day when the black reg- 
iments shall stream to the capital of the Montezumas, while the 
Army of the Potomac, becoming the Army of the St. Lawrence, 
shall march to Quebec and Montreal. (Enthusiastic applause, 
with great cheering and waving of hats.) And if by the blessing 
of God, and the wisdom that shall preside over the Navy Depart- 
ment, our navy shall reach the magnificent proportions of our 
army, and the navy of England shall meet her equal on the seas, 
if it shall only be the will of God that the nation's great admiral, 
Dupont, shall live to lead it on the ocean (applause), then I trust 
to live to hear of the explosion of the bombshells over the dome 
of St. Paul's, and of the arches of London bridge sent into the air. 
(Great applause.) 

Y 



KEMAEKS AT THE RECEPTION OF RUSSIAN 
NAVAL OFFICERS. 

On the 12th of October, 18G3, a dinner was given at the Astor House 
in New York by prominent gentlemen of that city in honor of the Rus- 
sian minister, and the Russian Admiral Lisovski, commanding the Rus- 
sian fleet then in New York Harbor. This entertainment had a peculiar 
significance, from the fact that at that moment our relations with England 
and France were by no means cordial, growing out of the temper excited 
in the United States by the disposition of the French government to rec- 
ognize the " Confederate States," and, conjointly with England, to inter- 
fere forcibly to break the blockade of Southern ports. Russia alone of 
the European powers had shown a friendly regard and disposition toward 
the federal government. The occasion of a visit by the Russian fleet to 
the United States waters was eagerly taken advantage of to manifest the 
appreciation here of that feeling. 

Mr. Davis was invited to the entertainment, and to respond to the 
second regular toast — " The President of the United States, the elected 
leader of the nation which is solving the problem of self-government and 
universal freedom" — which he did in the following words : 

Mr. President and Gentlemen, — I regard it as one of the 
privileges of my life to have been selected on this occasion to re- 
spond to a toast to the President of the United States. There are 
others who, by long association with that gentleman, earlier his 
political supporters than myself, more closely connected with him 
in the administration of great affairs in this great crisis of our his- 
tory, might have had that task more appropriately confided to 
them. But to none could it have been confided who would have 
with more pleasure and more heartiness borne his testimony to 
the earnest uprightness of purpose and far-seeing sagacity with 
which, in affairs more gravely complex and weighty than this na- 
tion, since the Eevolution, had ever been called upon to deal with, 
the President has discharged his high duty. None can speak with 
more profound reverence than I do of that exalted office, as exalt- 
ed as any known among men, conferred by the suffrages of his 
fellow-citizens, and to whose power obedience is yielded, not be- 



RECEPTION OF RUSSIAN NAVAL OFFICERS. 339 

cause of his power, but because of the veneration for the laws 
which raised him to his high post. So far I am not willing that 
any one shall claim more earnestly to represent the President of 
the United States than I do. I may be pardoned for saying that 
the following clause of the toast I must be permitted to criticise : 
"The elected chief of the nation." Certainly. "Solving the 
problem of self-government." No. We take it that this nation 
has solved that problem. (Applause.) That day of experiment 
has passed. This vessel was launched on the waters with many 
a trembling hope and many a prayerful utterance that it might 
survive the storms of life, and continue to be the light to other 
nations of the earth. Those fears are now dispelled — dispelled 
by more than eighty years of such success as has attended no ex- 
periment of human wisdom. After three generations now mould- 
ering in the grave under the oegis of the republic, having lived in 
peace and died in blessedness, shall we call that an experiment? 
Whose affairs have been conducted with more regularity and or- 
der ? Where in the civilized world has order been more secure ? 
Where has personal liberty been less violated ? Where the rights 
of religious conscience and free speech so much respected ? Where 
has yet the first drop of blood for treason to be shed in the civil- 
ized world ? And, until this rebellion broke out, where in all the 
world have arms not been drawn by citizen against citizen to 
maintain or to prostrate the experiment of the law ? No ; it is 
no experiment. It is a reality, vindicating now the right, in the 
success of eighty years, to continue to eternity to bear the torch 
of human freedom." (Great applause.) 

Speaking of England's hostility to the United States, Mr. Davis said : 

National hostility carried away men's hearts to swell the am- 
bition of commercial triumph and rivalry, turned away the high 
thoughts of the great Anglo-Saxon nation. Her aristocracy re- 
joiced that the prophecies of our passing greatness were coming 
to be truths, and they thought that they might as well give a push 
to help the prophecy to its accomplishment. That we have tried 
to be friends with all the world is notorious. That we have tried 
to forget these things, and that we have forgiven them, is especial- 
ly in the memory of all you gentlemen of New York ; for how 
long has it been since — for the representative of that power which 
within the last two years has inflicted deeper wounds on your 



340 EECEPTION OF RUSSIAN NAVAL OFFICERS. 

body than all the rest of the civilized world — your streets were 
swarming with multitudes, and resounding with hosannas to the 
prospective heir of the crown of the three islands ? And our 
reward has been the Trent impertinence, the Florida, the Alaba- 
ma, the pirate nest around our coast. Another great nation we 
thought we were entitled to the sympathy of — ay, and' we have 
the sympathy of the nation, though, perhaps, not of its ruler. It 
is the proud peculiarity of the American people that their heart 
is so large, and touches humanity at so many points, that, however 
the rulers of the world may be jealous of a power hostile to her 
greatness and desiring her overthrow, the people in their secret 
heart pray for her success. 

The last part of the toast to which I am called on to respond 
speaks of universal freedom. (LTurrah.) History will show no 
example of an equal struggle within the limits of any one nation, 
met with equal power, sustained with equal endurance, crowned 
with equal success, promising equal triumph with that in which 
we are engaged. But I turn to another subject — the palm of tri- 
umph belonging to the empire of Eussia. There serfdom — cov- 
ering twenty, thirty, forty millions of subjects, by the fiat of one 
man, and the assent of the great majority of the people, peaceful- 
ly, quietly, deliberately, with compensation to injured interests, 
with provision for the serf converted into a freeman — has vanish- 
ed like the morning clouds (applause); and this day, from one end 
of the empire of Eussia to the other, the sun rises in the east and 
sets in the west only on freemen. (Loud applause.) Now, the 
men of America, having faith in an overruling Providence, know 
that that retrograde motion which planets sometimes seem to have 
is because we regard them from wrong points of view ; but when 
we take the central situation in the universe, we recognize that 
they are circling round the centre of light. And so it is destined 
to continue until nations shall roll up like a scroll, and all created 
things shall be wrapped in the bosom of the Creator. 



NO PEACE TILL AFTER REBEL SUBMISSION. 

On the evening of the 9th of October, Mr. Davis, in response to an in- 
vitation, addressed a large meeting at the Cooper Institute, in the city of 
New York, upon the condition of public affairs. lie. urged the vigorous 
prosecution of the war inaugurated by the rebels in the South, and his 
argument was especially directed against the " Peace" party, which now 
was endeavoring to instill hopes of a settlement of the great controversy 
in any other mode than by victories in the field. lie maintained then 
that there was no government in the rebellious States — no lawful govern- 
ment — none that the federal authorities could in any manner recognize. 
When their armed opposition shall be swept away, it would then be for 
the Congress to reorganize those States, establish there and guarantee 
a republican form of government. lie said that 

" Before next year Maryland will have "wiped out slavery from 
her soil ; and if the Congress to meet in December should do its 
duty, we should have a free republic from Maine to Florida in less 
than two years. Let those who think the negro not good enough 
to serve by their side remember that they served in the ranks of 
George Washington and of Andrew Jackson. 

"I never sympathized with the radical Abolitionists, for I 
thought them one hair's breadth this side of craziness. I know 
that, with only a feeble influence, they have been used by North- 
ern Democrats and Southern Secessionists to smut and blacken 
all the rest of the people of the North. Now, when the nation is 
on the point of triumph ; now, when the only thing that fires the 
Southern heart is the success of the opposition here, and the hope 
that Mr. Seymour will come to their aid ; now, when the last ap- 
peal is being made ; now, even, some men begin to prate about 
'negro equality,' and revive the old prejudices which the enemies 
of the republic alone use for our mischief, and which no man can 
use for our good. And I say — as little regard as I have for the 
Abolitionists — that the man who now utters a word for the pur- 
pose of awakening prejudice against anyman on the side of the gov- 
ernment, is either a traitor at heart, or so low in intelligence that 
he does not know the consequences of his acts." 



342 NO PEACE TILL AFTER REBEL SUBMISSION. 

There is no complete report of the speech. The extracts and account 
given above are from the New York papers of the following day (Octo- 
ber 10th). 

The Thirty-eighth Congress met on December 7, 1863. On the 14th 
Mr. Davis was named Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, 
and chairman of a special committee of nine, to which was referred " so 
much of the President's Message as relates to the duty of the United 
States to guarantee a republican form of government to the States in 
which the governments recognized by the United States have been abro- 
gated or overthrown." 

On the 14th of January, 18G4, a joint resolution was before the House 
"explanatory of an act to suppress insurrection, punish treason and re- 
bellion, to seize and confiscate the property of rebels, and for other purposes." 
After a speech from Mr. S. S. Cox, of Ohio, in opposition thereto, Mr. 
Davis addressed the House in the following speech : 



CONFISCATION OF REBEL PROPERTY. 

The House being in Committee of the Whole on the State of the 
Union, and having under consideration the bill to confiscate the proper- 
ty of rebels, Mr. Davis said : 

Mr. Speaker, — With whatever pleasure the gentlemen upon 
this side of the House may have heard the very novel declaration 
of the gentleman from Ohio, that he contemplated supporting in 
all proper measures the administration in the prosecution of the 
war and the suppression of the rebellion, it is perhaps fortunate 
that the result of the political elections in the central slave States 
has placed the administration beyond the necessity of relying upon 
his support. Were it not so, I incline to think that the kind of 
support the administration would receive from the great majority 
of gentlemen on the other side of the House was indicated early 
in the session in that resolution proposed by a gentleman from 
New York [Mr. Fernando Wood], which pronounced this an in- 
human war. For myself, sir, relying on the fact that the people 
have sent enough of us here for the purpose of supporting the ad- 
ministration,! would suggest that perhaps gentlemen on the other 
side of the House had just as well execute the mission with which 
the constituents that elected them charged them — to oppose, to 
embarrass, to libel, and to break down the administration — and 
leave the support of it to gentlemen whom the people sent here to 
maintain it. With all due respect to the patriotic purposes, the 
eminent ability of the gentlemen on the other side, when they ten- 
der support I shall look at it with something of suspicion, and, for 
myself, shall say," Non tali auxilio, nee defensoribus istis." 

A specimen of that support, Mr. Speaker, is exhibited by the 
mode in which the bill brought in by the Chairman of the Com- 
mittee on the Judiciary has been received on that side of the 
House. It relates to what is now the settled policy of the admin- 
istration, which gentlemen say they intend to support in the sup- 
pression of the rebellion. Whether one degree or another of con- 
fiscation be expedient, whether it be extended to the lower actors 
in this great scene, or, as in my judgment is proper, it be confined 



344 CONFISCATION OF EEBEL PROPERTY. 

to a few of the leaders, still, that the confiscation of property shall 
attach to some portion of the people engaged in the rebellion is 
now the settled, resolved policy of the administration. The bill 
introduced by the Judiciary Committee is in furtherance of that 
policy. A joint resolution, 'in my judgment a very unwise one, 
of the last Congress, limited the operation of the Confiscation Law 
to" life estates. This bill contemplates the obliteration of that lim- 
itation. I think its language does not accomplish that purpose, 
and therefore I shall vote for the amendment of the gentleman 
from Pennsylvania [Mr. Stevens], which goes directly to the ob- 
ject sought to be accomplished by repealing the limiting reso- 
lution. 

But there we are met by the new supporters of the administra- 
tion with the suggestion that this is uprooting the fundamental 
law of the republic. I ask where ? What word in the Constitu- 
tion does it violate ? What principle does it in the least degree 
impeach? They quote the clause of the Constitution declaring 
that Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of trea- 
son, but that no attainder of treason shall work corruption of 
blood or forfeiture, except during the life of the person attainted. 

If I have read aright the Confiscation Law of the last Congress, 
it nowhere attaches any confiscation or forfeiture to a conviction 
for treason or to an attainder of treason. Am I right or am I 
wrong? There is no word in the law of the last Congress that 
attaches confiscation of property to -conviction of the person for 
treason, to attainder of the person for treason, on a criminal pro- 
ceeding in any court of justice. If that be so, then the quotation 
of the clause from the Constitution is simply irrelevant to the 
matter in debate, for it is that no attainder of treason shall 
work corruption of blood or forfeiture except during the life of 
the party ; so that, if there be no proceeding by indictment, there 
can be no attainder ; and if there be no attainder, there is nothing 
on which the residue of the words in the Constitution can operate. 
That simple observation disposes of the whole argument. It is 
wholly immaterial whether, in the event of the party's being con- 
victed of treason, Congress can or can not make a consequence of 
the judgment the forfeiture of lands in fee simple, or is confined 
to a forfeiture limited in duration by the life of the convict. 

The question here is whether there is any process of law, how- 
ever this provision be construed, by which we can effect a for- 



CONFISCATION OF REBEL PROPERTY. 345 

feiture of the whole fee in lands. That question gentlemen have 
nowhere met. 

If, however, the Constitution limits the consequences of a con- 
viction to a forfeiture for life, to assume that it limits every other 
form of process of law in like manner is simply begging the ques- 
tion. The Constitution speaks for itself. It limits the operation 
of an attainder. It limits nothing else. When, therefore, gentle- 
men accuse us here of uprooting the settled law of the land, they 
interpolate language not in the law, and quote it to condemn us. 
But even if the meaning of the Constitution itself were doubtful 
in a case of attainder, where the question would be whether the 
judgment of the court should be for the forfeiture of the land for 
life or in fee, no decision on that could affect any other process of 
law for confiscating lands without attainder. The doubt upon 
that question can not apj)ly to a subject beyond the purview of 
the question. 

Still it is worth while to hazard a suggestion touching the real 
meaning of those words so confidently invoked by our new allies 
for our confusion. I desire to speak with all modesty in solving 
this j^roblem, for difficulties beset every solution, and while it is 
quite clear that its meaning is not that assumed by our new allies, 
it is perhaps not so easy to give a demonstrably right solution. 
I speak with hesitation, because their confidence surprised me into 
assuming once before the correctness of their interpretation. I 
think, however, the technical language of the clause, read in the 
sense it bore in the English law, may light us on our way. I 
think it points to a very different meaning from that which the 
honorable gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Cox] supposes. 

No attainder shall work corruption of blood or forfeiture except 
during the life of the person attainted. Now I take it that the 
meaning of that clause is that the forfeiture worked must be ef- 
fected during life. The honorable gentleman from Ohio, and those 
who think with him, would construe it to be that the forfeiture, 
when worked, shall only endure for the life of the party. Palpa- 
bly the latter is the incorrect and the former the legal meaning. 
The purpose assumed is the protection of the offspring from pun- 
ishment for the guilt of the ancestor. But a fine is equally taken 
from the offspring, as land ; yet no one denies the right to fine a 
person attainted. There was, however, an effect of attainder that 
did punish the offspring, and the offspring alone. Every student 



346 CONFISCATION OF REBEL PROPERTY. 

of Blackstonc knows that the judgment convicting a person of 
treason operated a corruption of blood. The corruption of blood 
stopped the transmission of hercditable blood to any heir of the 
person attainted ; so that the legal effect of conviction for treason 
under the law of England was, first, to forfeit all the property, real 
and personal, of the person attainted, and, secondly, to corrupt his 
blood, destroy its heritable quality, so that he could neither take 
land by descent himself, nor transmit heritable blood to the per- 
sons who would, but for his attainder, have been his heirs. lie 
could, in the language of the law, neither be heir nor have heirs. 

Now, suppose the father of any person attainted for treason 
died the day after the execution, owning lands, they could not 
pass to the traitor's son, nor to any collateral relation claiming by 
descent through him, because the operation of the judgment, be- 
sides forfeiting the land owned by the party in his lifetime, had 
corrupted his blood, and no one could trace descent through him. 
He was a bar, cutting off the relationship between grandfather 
and grandson. Land which would have come to the grandson if 
the father had not been a person attainted, instead of going to the 
heir, was arrested in its transit to the heir by the corruption of 
blood, and passed either to the lord of the fee or to the king. 

So that the Constitution deals merely with corruption of blood 
and its operation. There shall be no corruption of blood or for- 
feiture worked by attainder except during the life of the person. 
Attainder worked no forfeiture after the death of the party except 
by the corruption of blood. The forfeiture of a fee-simple estate 
was not a forfeiture after the life of the party ; the whole fee was 
in the person attainted ; his heirs had no interest in it, and no law- 
yer would ever dream of describing a forfeiture for life by the 
words of the Constitution, or describe the forfeiture of a fee-simple 
estate as a forfeiture worked by attainder after the life of the par- 
ty. It was one of the settled laws of England at that time, and 
which also prevailed in some of the States of this Union, that the 
corruption of blood did, what the gentleman from Ohio so prop- 
erly execrates, operate upon innocent persons with reference to 
their rights coming from a different source after the criminal had 
expiated his crime. Now, without meaning to say positively that 
that is the meaning and operation of the section, I say that in my 
judgment it comes nearer an intelligible exposition of it than any 
such theory as this, that you can not take lands in fee, but you 



CONFISCATION OF REBEL PROPERTY. 347 

may take all his personal property absolutely, which was the 
ground of the President's threatened veto of last year ; that you 
can fine a man to the extent of his estate, but you can not take 
his lands to pay the fine. And being unintelligible, with all re- 
spect to our recent friends, they are driven to say that in the pun- 
ishment of treason the Constitution has been guilty of this intol- 
erable folly : that for robbing the mail, or piracy, for any ordinary 
offense, or murder on the seas, or in the army or navy for any 
other crime, Congress may prescribe what punishment they please; 
take the land in fee ; in their sense make a forfeiture after death ; 
but in providing for the punishment of treason, the greatest crime, 
the most dangerous crime, it has feebly attempted to protect inno- 
cent offspring by saving the lands of the convict, but leaving his 
life and all his personal property at the mercy of the law ; that it 
has been guilty of sanctioning the unrepublican discrimination 
between real and personal property, and adopting the aristocratic 
idea that land was something that must not be taken, but pre- 
served for the heir, to come down to him by a perpetual constitu- 
tional entail. And this anti-republican view is urged to fetter us 
in breaking the power of an aristocratic rebellion founded on land 
in large bodies and on negroes. Were there no other objection 
in this, that simple reductio ad absurdum disposes of the argument. 
But, Mr. Speaker, the question here, as I have said, is not, what 
forfeiture does it allow an attainder to work, but does it declare 
that no forfeiture, that no confiscation under any process of law 
shall affect land for a longer period than the life of the owner? 
Does it apply to any case where there is no attainder, no con- 
viction ? 

The law of the last Congress prescribed a different process from 
conviction in a court of law of the person guilty of the crime. It 
provides that upon proceedings in the District Court in the nature 
of proceedings in admiralty the lands of certain classes of persons, 
and all their personal property, shall be forfeited for the use of 
the government. 

And the Constitution provides that the property of citizens 
shall not be taken without due process of law. Now, the question 
which gentlemen on the other side of the House have to argue is, 
not the law of attainder, but whether the process in the District 
Courts of the United States to confiscate the property of persons 
proved to be of the specified classes is due process of law for de- 
priving a man of 'his proper 'ty under the Constitution. If they can 



34:8 CONFISCATION OF REBEL PROPERTY. 

not maintain that it is not due process of law within the meaning 
of the Constitution, they can not throw the least doubt on the con- 
stitutionality of this mode of procedure. 

If this were a new question, possibly there might be room for 
argument. But from the first administration down to this day 
there has never been a day in which, on the statute-books of the 
UiTited States, exactly this process to forfeit property for crime 
without first convicting the owner on indictment has not been 
prescribed. The law of 1799, among the first of the revenue laws, 
forfeited property brought in under fraudulent invoices, without 
proceeding against the individual personally ; and all the revenue 
laws from that day to this enforce these provisions by forfeitures 
and proceedings in rem. 

The navigation- laws of the United States, from the earliest 
days of the republic, inflict forfeiture in the District Court on pro- 
ceedings against the vessel for violation of those laws without 
prosecuting the owner, though liable to indictment. Who ever 
heard that a vessel could not be forfeited unless the master or 
owner were indicted, or until after they had been indicted ? Our 
laws regulating trade with the Indians make it penal to carry ar- 
dent spirits among them, and they punish the persons guilty and 
forfeit the property by process in rem in the District Court. Is 
that unconstitutional ? 

The law for the suppression of the slave-trade makes the parties 
violating it guilty of piracy, and they arc liable either to be hung 
or confined in the penitentiary, according to the grade of the of- 
fense. But yet the vessels caught are always forfeited, whether 
owner or master bo prosecuted or not. Was it ever heard that 
the person must be convicted of the crime before the vessel could 
be forfeited in the District Court? These things are of every-day 
practice, as every gentleman at all familiar with the ordinary adr 
ministration of the laws of the United States knows. In a word, 
indictment and conviction of the person is not the only due pro- 
cess of law by which a person may be deprived of his property. 
The daily process of levying taxes proves that. And Congress 
has pleased to authorize confiscation without conviction, but in the 
time-honored forms of the early republic. 

And another species of property about which gentlemen upon 
the other side of the House usually show more interest than 
about lands — property in negroes — affords a more striking illus- 
tration. We have in that case the same principle of confiscating 



CONFISCATION OF EEBEL PROPERTY. 349 

property before conviction of the delinquent, settled by the laws 
of Maryland and of Virginia, adopted by Congress as the laws in 
the two counties of the District of Columbia, from the earliest 
days of the republic down to the day on which I am speaking. 
The law of Virginia goes as far back as the days of Jefferson. It 
prohibited the introduction of slaves into Virginia from any other 
State and from foreign countries; and while it prescribed the 
penalty on the party so introducing them, it also declared the 
slave free. The gentlemen from Maryland here know very well 
that was the law of Maryland down to within a few years, and, in 
some cases, it is so now. When Congress adopted the laws of 
Maryland and Virginia, both of those statutes were the laws of 
this district, and they were in force down to the time of the eman- 
cipation of slaves in this District. 

Now, what was the ordinary process in these cases ? I do not 
remember in my experience while practicing as a lawyer, either 
in Virginia or the District of Columbia or in Maryland, of an in- 
dictment or action for the fine or forfeiture against a party intro- 
ducing negroes. It was the cvery-day practice when I came to 
the bar that negroes brought into that part of the District which 
was on the south of the Potomac River contrary to law, should 
apply to the court and bring a suit for their freedom ; and it was 
in the ordinary form of an action for trespass, complaining that 
the master had illegally imprisoned them, and the judgment of the 
court was one cent damage against the master for the imprison- 
ment. The question really involved was freedom or slavery. 
The law vested freedom ; the court authenticated it. In other 
words, the operation of the law was that the act of bringing a ne- 
gro across the line invested him with his freedom ; that it de- 
prived the master of his property, and invested the negro with the 
right to sue the man for the wrong committed by continuing to 
hold him. That has been adjudged again and again by the courts 
of Virginia and by the courts of Maryland ; and though writs of 
error have more than once carried such cases in this District to 
the Supreme Court, that tribunal never dreamed that this was a 
forfeiture of property without due process of law. If gentlemen 
will take the trouble to run through the volumes of the Supreme 
Court Reports, they will find several cases ; one so recent as 2 
Howard, in which that form of proceeding was recognized as a 
competent mode in which to assert the right of freedom, which 
was a forfeiture of the master's right. The man who was a slave 



850 CONFISCATION OF REBEL PROPERTY. 

on the oilier side of the line became a freeman by being brought 
this side of the line ; his master was not indicted, nor was his free- 
dom a consequence of the conviction of, nor of a judgment against 
his master, but he acquired his title to freedom by the act of the 
Congress of the United States, which inflicted forfeiture on his 
master for violating it. 

Congress, during the administration of Mr. Jefferson, I think, 
in organizing the Territories of Louisiana and Mississippi, in like 
manner forbade the introduction of slaves from abroad, and freed 
them when introduced by the master. And if we are to be told 
that this was antique legislation, and not lit for the light of these 
modern days, I ask gentlemen to read the compromise measures 
of 1850, brought in by the illustrious Kentuckian, Ilenry Clay, 
and passed by a Congress which thought fondly they had averted 
the agony that we now writhe under ; let them read the law for- 
bidding the slave-trade in the District of Columbia, where the 
hand of Ilenry Clay traced the words of forfeiture — that if any 
slave should be brought into this District by its owner, contrary to 
the provisions of the act, he should thereupon become liberated and 
free. 

Now that covers all the Confiscation Acts of the last Congress. 
It is wholly immaterial whether it relates to land or to personal 
property, whether you forfeit lands or negroes. The forfeiture of 
slaves would even meet the technical objection of the gentleman 
from Ohio, because formerly in Virginia, as every body knows, 
slaves were real estate, not personal estate, passing to the heirs, 
and not to the executors ; and it is only of late years that they 
have been treated as personal estate, though in the widow's share 
of them the traces of their real character still remain visible. Now 
the question that is involved in the Confiscation Law is not 
whether attainder can work corruption of blood affecting the 
heirs ; of course it can not ; it is not whether attainder can oper- 
ate forfeiture of lands descending after the death of the attainted 
person, nor whether an attainder is confined to carving a life es- 
tate by forfeiture out of a fee ; that is not the question. The 
question is whether, by other process of law not connected with 
indictment of the person, not following upon attainder, the United 
States government can say that those who have been in arms 
against it shall forfeit their property, and that the tribunals of the 
country shall enforce it in rem ; and this is settled by the tradi- 
tional laws of the republic. 



DRAFT AND COMMUTATION.— COLORED 
TROOPS. 

During the discussion of the " Conscription Bill" Mr. Davis opposed 
exemption from military service by payment of commutation-money, " ex- 
cept in favor of ministers of religion actually in charge of some congre- 
gation — of men having a wife or child dependent on them for support, and 
not having an income of twelve hundred dollars independent of their in- 
dustry — of members of the religious society of Friends, or other religious 
denominations conscientiously opposed to bearing arms." 

He also moved (February 10) to strike out from an amendment pro- 
posed so much as provided for the payment of three hundred dollars to 
the owner of any drafted slave, on the ground that if slaves were liable 
to military duty at all, they arc so precisely as all who owe obedience to 
the laws are liable. To the objection that otherwise the government 
would be taking t\\c jtropcrtij of the owner (in the labor of the slave) with- 
out compensation, he said : 

" I beg pardon, sir. The son owes to the father labor, by the 
law of every State in the Union, as assuredly as the slave owes 
the master labor. We do not necessarily make the slave a free- 
man by taking him for a soldier. We may make provision that 
he shall be free thereafter. When the son is taken, when the ap- 
prentice is taken, somebody is taken who is quite as dear, quite as 
necessary, quite as valuable to the father and to the employer as 
when the slave is taken from the master. In other words, where 
the obligation of military service rests, the law pursues it, and in- 
sists upon it, leaving the burden of other losses to follow the ne- 
cessities of the times." 

Next day (February 11) Mr. Davis moved as an amendment '< that the Secretary 
of War shall appoint a commission in cacli of the slave States represented in Con- 
gress, charged to award a just compensation to each loyal owner of any slave who 
may volunteer into the service of the United States, payable out of the commutation- 
money received," etc. In support thereof, he said : 

" Mr. Chairman, I submit this amendment, not because I think 
it due at all to the owner of the slave, but because the President 
and the Secretary of War, in executing the law of 1862 allowing 



352 DRAFT AND COMMUTATION.— COLORED TROOPS. 

the President to use and organize persons of African descent to 
suppress the rebellion, have seen fit to appoint a commission 
which is now in session in Maryland, for the purpose of estima- 
ting the value of, and awarding reasonable compensation to the 
loyal owners of, slaves who may volunteer into the United States 
service under the law of 1862. That brings the volunteering of 
slaves into some sort of correspondence with the established pol- 
icy of the government in paying bounties to volunteers, the differ- 
ence being that in the case of the slave the bounty is paid to the 
master instead, on freeing his slave, whereas the bounty in the case 
of the white volunteer of course goes to himself. 

" It is a very different thing to impose on the government, when 
it is driven to draft, the necessity of paying to every slaveowner 
a compensation for any slave that may be drafted. The poor 
man, whose son works for him on his ten acres, receives no com- 
pensation for that son when he is drafted into the service, while 
the wealthy slaveholder, who may have three or four hundred 
slaves alongside, is to receive a compensation of three hundred 
dollars for every one of his slaves who may be drafted. It is ap- 
parent that if the government has the right to draft slaves into the 
service, and if the government has the right to take the slave, it 
has the right to take him exactly as it takes the son, the father, 
or the brother of any citizen of the republic, with no more com- 
pensation and no less compensation for discharging the duty he 
owes to the country." 



FREEDMENS BUREAU.— DISPOSITION TO BE 
MADE OF FREE NEGROES. 

On the 25 th of January, the House having resumed the consideration 
of the Bill to establish a Bureau of Freedmcn's Affairs, Mr. Davis said : 

Me. Speaker and Gentlemen,— The bill which is now under 
consideration involves a subject forced on us bj the events of the 
war, and which must be determined one way or the other— the 
disposition of the freed negroes in the rebel States. The range 
of debate has naturally been very wide upon a bill of this char- 
acter, and topics not perhaps at first sight very directly related to 
it have been dragged into the discussion. 

The votes of the gentlemen from the loyal slave States cast a 
new light on the mind of the gentleman from New York [Mr 
Brooks] respecting the fate of the negro race on this continent 
But, while he justly appreciated the great and decisive weight of 
that vote upon the speakership of this House, he took occasion to 
discredit the moral power of that vote by impeaching the election 
of the representatives who cast it. He thinks they speak words 
not authorized by the people. He. said : 

"I know that the people of Maryland and of Delaware, if they had been allowed 
to vote, intended no such decree" — 

That is, of emancipation. 
"And I know that it is said those two States are better represented by the honora- 
ble gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Schenck] than by their representatives here." 

If this were merely meant as a compliment to my distinguished 
friend from Ohio, I would be among the first to admit that any 
district of Maryland, as well as any in New York, would be better 
represented by him than by any gentleman representing either 
State— even the gentleman from New York. But when it comes 
in the shape of an imputation upon the validity and moral force 
of the election, it questions the legitimacy of the administration ma- 
jority in this House, and must not pass unanswered. When the 
gentleman from New York says "it is said those two States are 
better represented by the honorable gentleman from Ohio than by 

Z 



■354 FKEEDMEN'S BUREAU. 

those who represent them here," no person who cares to have 
any respect for his knowledge of the public affairs of the day has 
so said. And when the honorable gentleman says that " he knows 
that the people of Maryland and Delaware, had they been allowed 
to vote, intended no such decree," I desire to say that the honor- 
able gentleman from New York does not know any such thing, 
and knows no fact that makes the error excusable. 

" Had they been allowed to vote I" Who hindered them from 
voting? Where were they stopped from voting? " The people 
of Maryland !" If the gentleman means to say that because the 
people of Maryland determined that the traitors of Maryland, who 
disavowed their allegiance to the government, should not tarnish 
the ballot-box by their votes, we differ about the terms, but not 
about the facts. We did mean they should not vote, and we so 
meant because by the laws of Maryland such men are not entitled 
to vote. They who disavow, deny, and disown their allegiance 
to the United States, and declare and avow they are not citizens 
of the United States, have no right to vote ; and so the judges of 
election held, almost from one end of Maryland to the other. If 
that is not good election law, this House can say so ; the General 
Assembly of Maryland can say so ; and if both be silent, the law 
is confessed. 

If the gentleman referred to the complaints which are made of 
the interference of the military in the election, I desire to say that 
that complaint comes from nobody but heated partisans who howl 
because they are beaten. Even they confined the complaint to 
one single Congressional district out of five, and to four out of 
eight counties in that Congressional district ; and therefore, con- 
ceding every thing that is complained of, and every thing that is 
inferred from the complaint, we have an undisputed election in 
four fifths of the State, which the gentlemen who make the com- 
plaint do not dispute. No one questions the election of the hon- 
orable member from the Fifth Congressional District [Mr. Harris], 
where the divided Union vote was overborne by the united se- 
cession vote, and where the aggregate vote of the district fell only 
a little below the normal vote of the district before the rebellion 
attracted many of its young men to the rebel ranks. My honor- 
able friend in my eye from the Second Congressional District [Mr. 
Webster] could find no competitor to meet him before the people. 
The distinguished gentleman, the senior of the delegation [Mr. 



DISPOSITION TO BE MADE OF FREE NEGROES. 355 

Thomas], from the Fourth Congressional District, is here for the 
second time an unopposed candidate. And I am here because 
my political opponents did not care to take the responsibilities of 
a canvass, although aided and urged to oppose me by a distin- 
guished adviser of the President upto within a week of the elec- 
tion. So that of all the State of Maryland, whose election is here 
impeached, in three fifths of it there was no contest whatever; in 
one fifth there was a contest in which' our opponents had so free 
an election that they have their representative on this floor ; and 
in the other fifth the contest is only impeached in four of the 
eight counties ; and if the whole vote which was not cast in that 
district be added to the aggregate vote of our opponents, the 
emancipationists will still have a majority of thirteen or fourteen 
thousand in the State. And yet, in the face of such facts, a gen- 
tleman, who is entitled to be regarded as an intelligent observer 
of public affairs, rises here and says that lie knows that if the peo- 
ple of Maryland had been permitted to vote they would not have 
allowed the emancipation candidate for Comptroller to carry the 
State by twenty thousand majority ! 

In Delaware the case is still more absurd ; for, after an ani- 
mated canvass, the opponent of the representative from that State 
withdrew on the eve of the election; and yet the vote for the gen- 
tleman from Delaware was the largest ever cast in that State for 
any candidate, and a majority of the whole vote of the State. 

Mr. Speaker, the Legislature of Maryland is overwhelmingly 
Union, but not overwhelmingly for emancipation. There is a 
majority in the Senate opposed to it, and there is a majority in 
the IIousc who were not in favor of it when they came to An- 
napolis ; because, though elected by emancipation constituencies, 
they were nominated before their constituents had developed their 
views upon the subject. But this election which the gentleman 
from New York wishes to impeach carried with it such moral 
power that its enemies in the Senate and its lukewarm and doubt- 
ful friends in the IIousc of Delegates arc dragged backward over 
their prejudices and compelled to pass just such a bill as we dic- 
tated to them, and it stands now the law of the State of Maryland 
by the votes of a majority of both houses of the Legislature. 
They confessed that moral power which the honorable gentleman 
ignorantly denies. 

"Slavery is dead," says the honorable gentleman. "Slavery 



356 FREEDMEN'S BUREAU. 

is dead" is echoed by some on this side of the House. " Slavery 
is dead" is echoed from the too sanguine people of the country. 
He may be a very sick man, Mr. Speaker, but I assure gentlemen 
of this House and the country that he is not dead ; and if he is 
not done to death he will be your master again. That is my 
opinion, and I think my friend from Kentucky in my eye [Mr. 
Mallory] agrees with me. 

Slavery is not dead in Maryland. We have to carry a major- 
ity of the Convention on the old slavery apportionment, where 
one fourth of the population ties the body ; and whether the hos- 
tile influence that presides near the President's ear will allow 
Maryland to become a free State, or will fail her in her hour of 
need, remains yet to be seen. Up to this day Maryland is under 
no obligations to the President of the United States for the great 
strides that the cause of emancipation has made there. A Con- 
vention of the loyal men, the emancipationists of Maryland, on 
the 22d of this month, while declaring themselves in favor of im- 
mediate and unconditional emancipation, and while expressing 
their confidence in the President and their appreciation of his 
services, added this significant admonition, worthy of the State 
and of the people that uttered it : 

"Resolved, That this Convention is in favor of the entire and immediate abolition 
of slavery in this State and in the States in rebellion, and is opposed to any reor- 
ganization of State governments in those States which do not recognize the imme- 
diate and final abolishment of slavery as a condition precedent. That this Con- 
vention express their sympathy with the radical emancipationists in Missouri, and 
in Arkansas, Tennessee, and Louisiana, and regret that influences in the cabinet 
have, in Maryland and those States, depressed the efforts of the radical friends of 
the administration and of emancipation, and given prominence to those who are the 
unwilling advocates of emancipation." 

I trust that that admonition will have its weight, and that these 
sinister influences will cease to be the controlling element near 
the presidential ear in this grave crisis of emancipation in Mary- 
land ; and I desire that the country shall understand that, being 
under small obligations to the President for what has been done 
in Maryland up to this time, the people of Maryland thought it 
wise, while expressing their confidence in the President, to put 
that significant resolution before him for his serious consideration, 
so as to show that their devotion is not personal, but to principle; 
that their interest is in the cause and not in a man ; and that 
while they will support the man as long as the man supports the 



DISPOSITION TO BE MADE OF FEEE NEGROES. 357 

cause, if the cause fail by any failure elsewhere, there may be a 
revision of their judgment respecting the person. 

But "slavery is dead in the rebel States." No, sir. No, sir. 
Far from it. If our honorable friends on the other side elect 
their President in the coming fall, slavery is as alive as it was 
the day that the first gun blazed against Sumter. If we lose the 
majority in the next Congress, slavery is as powerful as it ever 
was. We are, it is true, in the* condition in which we can not 
stand still. We must go backward or we must go forward. My 
face, sir, is to the future. I wish so to look at it, and so to ^y, to 
the men of my day and generation, what I think about the great 
measures which now touch the salvation of the country, that, 
whether I be on the winning or on the losing side, whether the 
nation triumph or fail, whenever any body shall by accident here- 
after rake about among the ashes of the past and find my name, 
he will find at least that I did not fear to say to friend and foe 
what the times demand ; and it may be that it will be well if it 
were heeded. 

Slavery is not dead by the proclamation. What lawyer at- 
tributes to it the least legal effect in breaking the bonds of the 
slave ? Executed by the bayonet, legally valid to the extent of 
the duration of the war, under the law of 1862, which authorizes 
the President to use the people of African descent as he may see 
fit for the suppression of the rebellion, it is undoubtedly valid to 
the extent of turning them loose from their masters during the 
rebellion. So long as the military power is engaged in suppress- 
ing resistance, they are free from their masters. Re-establish the 
old governments, allow the dominant aristocracy to repossess the 
State power in its original plenitude, how. long will they*be free? 
What courts will give them their rights? What provision is 
there to protect them ? Where is the writ of habeas corpus ? 
How are the courts of the United States to be open to them ? 
Who shall close the courts of the States against the master? 
Does the master resort to the court against the slave ? No ; he 
seizes him by the neck. The law of last Congress freeing a few 
slaves provides that that act may be pleaded in defense. But 
when is the slave sued by his master? When is the time to plead 
in any such process ? Gentlemen legislate without a knowledge 
of the country or of the people they are legislating for. Their 
laws are on the statute-book, and the opinions of the dominant 



358 FREEDMEN'S BUREAU. 

faction conspire to perpetuate the master's rights and the slave's 
wrongs. Nothing but the resolute declaration of the United 
States that it shall be a condition precedent that slavery shall be 
prohibited in their Constitutions, and that the United States shall 
give judicial guarantees to the negroes, freedom in fact, and that 
the United States shall be kept under the control of men of such 
political views and purposes that the law will be executed as a 
constitutional law and imposed o\l reluctant people — nothing else 
can accomplish the death of slavery. 

Supposing that to be done, Mr. Speaker, what then? This bill 
relates to the other grave social problem of the destiny of the 
negro race when their bond is broken. Now, many of them are 
thrown on our hands. We have to take care of them. To that 
extent the bill is right, and I shall vote for it for that purpose. 
How well it will answer, how far it must be modified after the 
national cause shall triumph, remains to be seen. Let the things 
of the future bo cared for by the future. But it is necessary now 
to determine our policy respecting the negroes when freed ; to 
form some definite ideas as to what shall be the future of the ne- 
gro race ; in other words, what dispositions we will make of them 
when we have broken the master's yoke, when Maryland shall 
have broken it hereafter, when Missouri shall have finally broken 
it, when West Virginia shall have finally broken it, and when 
slavery in all the rebel States shall have been destroyed and 
broken up in fact. 

There are on that subject two, and only two, theories. The 
President says, " Colonize and pay for them." The people say, 
" Leave them where they are." In favor of colonization, and 
compensation to all loyal persons in the rebel States, we have the 
declaration of the President of the United States, which naturally 
carries with it great weight. He has formally proposed it for the 
consideration of the people as his preferred policy. It is for that 
reason that it is the more important to look at it directly in the 
face, and to deal with it, subject to the conditions which it in- 
volves, if it be adopted as the policy of the nation. It has been 
discussed and commented on by a distinguished gentleman, a 
member of his cabinet, supposed, on that and other subjects, more 
accurately to represent his opinion than any other person. (The 
Postmaster General.) These comments throw a flood of light on 
the views which prevail in high quarters on the practical execu- 



DISPOSITION TO BE MADE OF FREE NEGROES. 359 

tion of the scheme of colonization, and the industrial and social 
reasons -which prompt or justify it. These comments have been 
published broadcast over the country as comments upon the 
emancipation policy of the President of the United States. Those 
comments have never been disavowed. They are entitled to our 
grave and respectful consideration, both from the high position 
and character of the gentleman from whom they emanate, and 
his peculiar relations to the President, and the concurrence of 
view between him and the President asserted and not disavowed. 
Those comments are in the form of an attack upon the " radical 
abolitionists;" but, while that is the form, the substance is a vin- 
dication of the colonization policy of the President, a demonstra- 
tion of its necessity to the success of the emancipation policy pro- 
claimed by the President, and the " radical abolitionists" are all 
who differ from the President and his commentator ! I am one 
of them. 

What are the grounds ? First of all it is said that the " radical 
abolitionists" wish to change the Constitution of the United States 
and all of our laws, to elevate to an equality this race, which is 
wholly untrue ; and, in the next place, that unequal races can not 
live together on terms of equality and peace, and therefore that it 
is necessary to prevent the massacre of the negro that he should 
be expatriated. Mr. Speaker, what is the foundation of this view? 
The negro must be colonized if he be free, or a war of races will 
exterminate him ! What justifies this alternative? Will gentle- 
men tell me where in the history of the world they find the fact 
upon which they base that astounding generalization ? Civilized 
people have overborne savages, men of one religion have borne 
down men of a different religion, ambition has overturned one 
nation by another, but where in the history of the world is there 
any case of a nation going to work to exterminate a large portion 
of its people of another race living in the midst of it, of the same 
religion, civilized in the same manner, conforming to its laws, 
subject to its will, willing to work for its wages, not ambitious, 
and not disturbing the public peace, because they are of a differ- 
ent race ? Where is the instance in the history of the world of 
the subjugation and massacre of a different race under these cir- 
cumstances? In earlier times great masses of people poured from . 
Central Asia over Europe. They were of a different race from 
the inhabitants oftheEoman empire, in any ethnological sense in 



360 FREEDMEN'S BUREAU. 

which the -word can be used. I do not know that they enslaved 
the whole mass of the people of the Roman empire. My impres- 
sion is that the conquered civilized the conqueror, and that it did 
not end in the social war such as is contemplated here, but the 
descendants of both form now the people of Europe. 

The distinguished commentator on the colonization views of 
the President refers to the Moors of Spain. In an ethnological 
sense they were far from kin in point of race to the Spaniards. 
But race was not the ground of war ; it was religion ; and every 
decree which undertook to expel them gave them the alternative 
of baptism or exile. The Spaniards wanted them to stay, and 
Ferdinand and Isabella would have been glad if they had re- 
mained to decorate the southern portion of their empire, the per- 
petual glory of their missionary zeal. 

Then we are referred to San Domingo. That is exactly what 
gentlemen on the other side of the House are preparing for us in 
the future. There was no revolt of slaves against their masters, 
there was no war of one race against another, unwilling to live in 
peace and industry ; but the French Assembly, having freed the 
slaves of San Domingo, undertook to reduce them to slavery 
again. They revolted against the authority which attempted to 
reduce them to slavery, and under Toussaint L'Ouverture, whose 
military genius Thiers thinks it worth while to commend, defeated 
both France and England in their attempt to reduce and hold 
the island. 

These are the examples of wars of race ! But why do they pass 
over the peaceful example of emancipation of Jamaica and the 
French colonies, where the circumstances would be more analo- 
gous ? "Why do they not invoke the great example of Mexico 
and South America? The Indian of those countries is as far re- 
moved from the Spaniard as our Indians from us, and as we are 
from the negro. The Spaniard gained and wielded the empire 
over them, but neither is exterminated ; the two races are not 
blended, neither is reduced to slavery, and in Mexico both unite 
against the common foe. Race has nothing to do with the ques- 
tion. The Indian and Spaniard live together because both are 
civilized, and both are Christian, and both are interested in the 
same laws, and government, and industry. 

I wait patiently till the gentlemen adduce their historic facts 
upon which to rest their theory of the necessary contest of races 



DISPOSITION TO BE MADE OF FREE NEGROES. 361 

to reply to them. I have dealt only with those they have fur- 
nished. 

The honorable gentleman from New York [Mr. Brooks] ar- 
raigned the harsh, hard-hearted conduct of Massachusetts toward 
the Indians. The war of Massachusetts on the Indians was that 
of a civilized and Christian people against a people of different 
religion, and which refused every form of American civilization. 
The same differences of religious and social organization prevents 
the toleration of a Mormon people in any of our States hitherto. 
He might have found an example nearer at home. The only ex- 
ample upon the American continent of a war on the peace and 
quiet of the negro is the riots in New York city last summer, 
when Seymour's friends, the Pahdees, undertook to show their 
Democratic mercy to the wretched negro. I agree that it is pos- 
sible that such a class of population as that might be tempted to 
oppress the negro, but no class of American population would 
condescend to do it. There was more of Democratic hostility to 
the government than Celtic hostility to the negro. An argu- 
ment without a fact is not likely to carry conviction ; but the gen- 
tleman from New York did not venture to use the only one per- 
tinent to his purpose, which bad men had prepared at his very 
threshold. 

Then what are you going to do with them? The President 
and the commentator say, go to kindred races and congenial 
climes. Where? To Texas? That is abandoned. To Central 
America, for the purpose of making a connection between the 
great oceans ? That was respectfully declined. To South Amer- 
ica? I have not heard that the President has been successful 
there in finding a kindred race willing to receive them. Back to 
Africa ? Won't you ask as a matter of kindness to transplant the 
Irish back to Ireland, to a kindred race and congenial bogs? 
Who inhabit Mexico ? Who inhabit Central America ? Who in- 
habit South America ? I take it the Indian of this peninsula is 
farther removed from the negro of the African peninsula than we 
are who come more directly from the common stock of Central 
Asia. Then to transplant them there would be putting a greater 
diversity of races together to come into collision. * Or will they 
love each other, though alien in race, because of their color? Is 
skin deep the depth of their philosophy ? 

In the imagination of the commentator, Cuba is the central em- 



362 FREEDMEN'S BUREAU. 

pire of the negro ; and strange as it appears, while one party of 
colonizationists are talking of transplanting the negro to the coast 
of Africa, the commentator on the President's policy grows enthu- 
siastic over the vision of the negroes settled in the American trop- 
ics inviting their brethren from Africa to this Western world — a 
new Canaan for that outcast and rescued race? What becomes 
of the Spaniard and his rights ? What becomes of the rights of 
the white population ? What becomes of the aristocratic Span- 
iard, who has been crushing generation after generation in Cuba 
to enhance his wealth? How is he to receive the African in 
spite of the diversity of race ? Is the Spaniard nearer in blood 
because Spain is nearer geographically to Africa? The theory 
of the incompatibility of different races has no foundation in his- 
tory. The moment you come to state it in words, and ask what 
it means, all the theory, all the philosophy, and all the facts break 
down, and there is the end of it. Its very advocates discard it in 
their dreams. 

But we are ourselves interested a little in this question of ex- 
portation of the negro. The President proposes to pay loyal own- 
ers for loss of slaves by the acts of the United States. That is 
part of his scheme of settlement. But who will submit to addi- 
tional millions of taxation for slaves freed by the United States ? 
Such a debt would equal the war debt : it would prostrate the re- 
sources of the country for generations : it would inflict the scourge 
of perpetual debt on a land destroyed by civil war, and made a 
desert by the deportation of its laboring population. The free 
men of the free States will not mortgage the labor of their sons 
and daughters for such a purpose ; and the loyal men of the South 
must, and will, find their indemnity in the increased value of their 
lands, if they are not deprived of their labor. 

But if the schemes of colonization be persisted in, who will pay 
the cost ? Who will pay for the transportation ? Who will sup- 
ply the depleted labor of the country ? Who is going to pay the 
increased price of bread to the poor mechanic ? Who is going to 
pay the increased price of cotton ? Who is going to fill up the 
enormous vacuum of labor swept away by this insane and un- 
christian philanthropy? What is the negro to do in the mean 
time? You can not take them away to-morrow or in a genera- 
tion. The schemers propose to build canals and fortifications, 
connect the Mississippi with the lakes— -for a generation ! Under 



DISPOSITION TO BE MADE OF FKEE NEGROES. 363 

whose supervision, at whose expense, by what new forms of so- 
cialism will you sweep a whole region of country of three or four 
million people, and concentrate them upon the banks of the Mis- 
sissippi to eat bread and dig ditches, while the cotton-fields are 
implanted, and men and women starving? When you undertake 
to colonize the negro, you will meet the master, who says, "Do 
not leave me to starvation." The master will offer the negro more 
to stay than the government will offer him to go. Two genera- 
tions can not fill up his place ; and if we can stand his presence 
two generations, perhaps Christian philosophy will enable our de- 
scendants to reconcile themselves to the permanence of what has 
been found tolerable so long. 

Why should they consent to go to barbarous countries ? Why 
should they love the people of Ashantee ? Would the King of 
Dahomey protect them from the cannibals of Africa ? They pre- 
fer to stay where they are. You can not offer them as good 
homes ; you can not offer them as good wages ; }< ou can not give 
them as good treatment ; you can not give them as good churches, 
nor as good houses, and food, and clothing for their children. 
Why should they consent to go ? 

Now deal with the problem under the conditions which exist. 
The folly of our ancestors and the wisdom of the Almighty, in its 
inscrutable purposes, having allowed them to come here and plant- 
ed them here, they have a right to remain here, and they will re- 
main here to the latest syllable of recorded time. And whether 
they become our equals or our superiors, whether they blend or 
remain a distinct people, your posterity will know, for their eyes 
will behold them as ours do now. These are things which we can 
not control. Laws do not make, laws can not unmake them.. If 
God has made them our equals, then they will work out the prob- 
lem which he has sent them to work out ; and if God has stamped 
upon them an ineradicable inferiority, you can not make one hair 
white or black, or add a cubit to their stature. Let us leave such 
questions for gentlemen of the school of Wendell Phillips to talk 
of; but I earnestly pray gentlemen in high positions, in view of 
the excited and feverish state of the public mind, in dealing with 
this delicate topic of the welfare of millions of whites and blacks, 
not to add to the inherent difficulties of the problem prejudices 
drawn from fancies, not facts, which we may never be called upon 
to deal with, and which can only exasperate the very feeling which 



364 FREEDMEN'S BUREAU. 

we ought to allay, and instigate the very collision we all dep- 
recate. 

Sir, I am a Marylander, not a " Northern fanatic." My father 
was a slaveholder. I was myself for years a slaveholder. I have 
lived nearly all my life in Maryland. I know the temper of her 
people. I have lived for years in Virginia. I know the temper 
of her people ; I know the relations of the white and black popu- 
lation in those States, and I am going to state some facts to the 
House nearer home than those cited by the dreamers. 

In Maryland we have more free negroes than any other State 
in the Union. Virginia stands next. She has some fifty thou- 
sand among five hundred thousand slaves, and we have eighty- 
three thousand among eighty-seven thousand slaves. One eighth 
of our population is free negro. In 1859, just before the rebel- 
lion, there was what was called in Maryland a "Slaveholders' 
Convention" — a phenomenon under the sun — fit precursor of the 
slave confederacy ! Nobody could be admitted who did not own 
slaves ; and their purpose was, as their resolutions indicated when 
introduced, to put an end to free negroism in Maryland for the 
advantage of the white population. There was one man in that 
assembly who was not crazy, and that man was an old Whig 
whom I honored, and whom my friend from Kentucky [Mr. Mal- 
lory] knew and honored. His name was James Alfred Pearce, 
always a statesman, always a gentleman, however wandering into 
errors in his last days. He was placed upon the committee to 
which this subject was referred, and being a gentleman and a 
large slaveholder, and knowing something about political econo- 
my, and the effect of tampering with the laws of industry, he em- 
bodied his sane views in a report to that Convention, a part of 
which I will read for the benefit of the House : 

" The existence of so large a number of free blacks in the midst of a slaveholding 
State is believed to be of itself an evil, and this evil is readily perceived to be greater 
when it is considered that a portion of them arc idle, vicious, and unproductive. 
This, however, is not the case with the majority of them, and their removal would, 
as the committee believe, be far greater than all the evils the people of Maryland 
ever suffered from them. In the city of Baltimore it is estimated that there are 
more than twenty-five thousand of them, employed chiefly as domestic servants or 
laborers in various departments of industry. In many of the rural districts of the 
State, where labor is by no means abundant, they furnish a large supply of agricul- 
tural labor, and it is unquestionable that quite a large portion of our soil could not 
be tilled without their aid." 



DISPOSITION TO BE MADE OF FEEE NEGROES. 355 

How much of South Carolina or Mississippi could be tilled 
without their aid ? 

"In some districts they supply almost all the Labor demanded by the formers. 
Their removal from the State would deduct nearly fifty per cent, from the house- 
hold and agricultural labor furnished by people of this color, and indispensable to 
the people of the State ; would produce great discomfort and inconvenience to the 
great body of householders ; would break up the business and destroy the property 
of large numbers of landowners and landrenters— a class whose interests are enti- 
tled to as much consideration as those of any other portion of our citizens ; would 
be harsh and oppressive to those people themselves ; would violate public senti- 
ment, which is generally not only just, but kindly, and would probably lead to other 
evils which the committee forbear to mention. We are satisfied that such a meas- 
ure could not receive the legislative sanction, and would not be tolerated by the 
great body of the people of Maryland, even with that sanction." 

That is from James Alfred Pearce, a slaveholder. Eveu the 
secession Legislature of Maryland, then about to meet, had it 
passed that law, James A. Pearce tells them the people of Mary- 
land would not tolerate them in doing it. I beg you, gentlemen, 
observe the strength of the language : 

"The committee, therefore, can not recommend their expulsion from the State. 
Still more unwilling should they be to favor any measure which looked to their be- 
ing deprived of the right to freedom which they have acquired by the indulgence 
of our laws and the tenderness of their masters, whether wise or unwise, or which 
they have inherited as a birthright." 

Then, sir, in Maryland a free negro has some rights. 

The policy of the report prevailed in this Convention of slave- 
holders, and the iniquitous purpose was not by them pressed on 
the Legislature. 

Some of the people in that Convention were in the Legislature, 
and a Mr. Jacobs was one of them. He introduced a law to hire 
the .free negroes out to the highest bidders ; and if they should be 
disobedient after being hired out, then they were to be sold as 
slaves for life. The bill could not be passed. It was objected to 
by county after county. It was only allowed to become a law 
with reference to four or five counties— St. Mary's, Charles, Som- 
erset, Worcester, Baltimore County, and perhaps one or two oth- 
ers ; and it was not allowed to be operative till approved by the 
people of the counties respectively. The friends of the infamous 
scheme went before the people at the presidential election in those 
counties ; for the Legislature would not allow the law even to ap- 
ply to those counties unless a majority of the people willed it. In 



306 FREEDMEN'S BUREAU. 

Howard, one of the slaveholding counties, they got just 55 votes 
for it, and against it 1397. In Baltimore County they got 681 
votes for, and 536-1 against it. In Kent County they got 74 votes 
for, and 1502 votes against it. It passed in no county except in 
one, and there by an accident. That is the judgment of the peo- 
ple of Maryland on the relations of the laboring free colored peo- 
ple, living among them, essential to their industry, a part of their 
social system, filling well their place in life, without whom their 
interests can not be protected, and which we neither will expel 
ourselves, nor encourage to go, nor allow other people to expel. 

If gentlemen want to know still farther how Maryland regards 
the free negro population, I desire to say that the emancipation 
movement of Maryland is indebted, very much to the commence- 
ment of negro enlistments in Maryland for the same economic 
reason. Colonel Birney was sent there with general orders to 
enlist negroes. He was not instructed to take slaves. He com- 
menced the enlistment of free negroes. Gentlemen found at once 
that that was a discrimination between the lo} T al people who do 
not own slaves and the disloyal people who do own slaves ; and 
my friend Judge Bond wrote to the Secretary of War remonstrat- 
ing against the inequality of taking from the Union men their 
labor, and leaving with the secessionist his labor. He pointed 
out the law of 1862, authorizing the enlisting of one as well as of 
the other. The Secretary of War agreed with him. Birney 
acted under the implied, if not the express authority of the Sec- 
retary qf War, and commenced to levy from the slave population, 
in order that the Union men might have the free colored popula- 
tion to hire. So the beginning of slave enlistments was a ques- 
tion of political economy which the President and his commenta- 
tor propose to solve in one way, but which the people of Mary- 
land mean to solve in another way. 

But it was also apparent that every slave enlisted was a poor 
white man's substitute. It was that, more than an}?- thing else, 
that brought directly before the people of Maryland at the last 
election the burdens they were suffering from the existence of 
slaver}^, and that aided more than did the bayonets to which the 
gentleman from New York refers, more than all proclamations, 
more than any other argument urged, in bringing on our side the 
people of the slaveholding counties of Maryland, who had voted 
at the beck of the slaveholders for generations. They said, "If 
we are to have a draft, and if our rich neighbor's plantation is to 



DISPOSITION TO BE MADE OF FEEE NEGKOES. 3( j- 

be cultivated while we are dragged off to fill the quota of the 
State we thank that an injustice. We arc for slave enlistments, 
and m favor of relieving, the white people from the disproportion: 

it was that view earned home by my honorable friend who repre^ 
sets the First Congressional District [Mr. Crcswell], urged upon 
every hustmg, m every fence corner, that dragged „« men in 
homespun to east their first independent vote, and my honor" 

pttfvoT * fiKt ***' " *» '— -5« inX 
Such was the telling power of the enlistment of slaves that mv 
col eague got in the county of Worcester, one of the great ^ 
holding counties, several hundred more votes than his pr,d _ 
M. Cnsfield a most able gentleman, got when he wis candidal 
ot the united Union party. ""u*w 

If we are to be treated, Mr. Speaker, to speculations on equalitv 

miLS , r' ra ?' aDd ""*" ° f tha ' kiDd ' to bewX S 
mislead the pubhc judgment upon this grave and important topic 

allow me to beseech gentlemen to recollect that we people ^ 

O roes aie not the only proscribed race in the world- that other 
nations have been as nnjust and as inclined to o P1 is a d H 

SXTT 1 "« *■ noVetter'^ni'n ' 
groes do here. How long has it been since " do<» of a Christ;-,,," 
was the most polite word to us in the Moslems' mouth How 
lo g has .t been since a Brahmin would condescend to it at tabll 
with the most aristocratic Englishman? How long has] been 

U a o C odof e the°^ S ° f EU 7 6 refUSed t0 "**" ** "cod w li 
blood of the mlhm, or the peasant of Continental Europe? Hive 

the other side whatever *, • enll S Wen - J he S gentlemen on 

combine, whatever the Ik "hlX T ^T"" ""* * * " S 
to the public service 7T a -a aS ' damage ma y be done 
eestionVof n, T ™ deClde the qnration, not upon sag- 



REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT IN THE REBEL- 
LIOUS STATES. 

On the 22d of March, 1864, the House refused to recommit the Bill 
for the Government of the Rebellious States reported from the Select 
Committee, and the question being upon ordering the bill to be engrossed 
and read a third time, Mr. Davis, as Chairman of the Select Committee, 
addressed the House as follows : 

Mr. Speaker, — The bill -which I am directed by the Commit- 
tee on the Rebellious States to report is one which provides for 
the restoration of civil government in States whose governments 
have been overthrown. It prescribes such conditions as will se- 
cure not merely civil government to the people of the rebellious 
States, but will also secure to the people of the United States per- 
manent peace after the suppression of the rebellion. 

The bill challenges the support of all who consider slavery the 
cause of the rebellion, and that in it the embers of rebellion will 
always smoulder ; of those who think that freedom and perma- 
nent peace are inseparable, and who are determined, so far as their 
constitutional authority will allow them, to secure these fruits by 
adequate legislation. 

The vote of gentlemen upon this measure will be regarded by 
the country with no ordinary interest. Their vote will be taken 
to express their opinion on the necessity of ending slavery with 
the rebellion, and their willingness to assume the responsibility of 
adopting the legislative measures without which that result can 
not be assured, and may wholly fail of accomplishment. Their 
vote will be held to show whether they think the measure now 
proposed, or any which may be moved as a substitute, is an ade- 
quate and proper measure to accomplish that purpose. It is en- 
titled to the support of all gentlemen upon this side of the House, 
whatever their views may be of the nature of the rebellion ; and 
the relation in which it has placed the people and States in rebel- 
lion toward the United States, not less of those who think that 
the rebellion has placed the citizens of the rebel States beyond the 



REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT IN THE REBELLIOUS STATES. gQQ 

protection of the Constitution, and that Congress, therefore, has 
supreme power over them as conquered enemies, than of that 
other class who think that they have not ceased to be citizens and 
States of the United States, though incapable of exercising politi- 
cal privileges under the Constitution, but that Congress is charged 
with a high political power by the Constitution to guarantee re- 
publican governments in the States, and that this is the proper 
time and the proper mode of exercising it. It is also entitled to 
the favorable consideration of gentlemen upon the other side of 
the House, who honestly and deliberately express their judgment 
that slavery is dead. To them it puts the question whether it is 
not advisable to bury it out of our sight, that its ghost may no 
longer stalk abroad to frighten us from our propriety. 

It does not address itself to that class of gentlemen upon the 
other side of the House, if there be any, nor to that class of the 
people of the country who look for political alliance to the men 
who head the rebellion in the South, and say to them, let us 

" Once more 
Erect the standard there of ancient knight, 
Yours be the advantage all, mine the revenge." 

It purports, sir, not to exercise a revolutionary authority, but to 
be an execution of the Constitution of the United States, of the 
fourth section of the fourth article of that Constitution, which not 
merely confers the power upon Congress, but imposes upon Con- 
gress the duty of guaranteeing to every State in this Union a re- 
publican form of government. That clause vests in the Congress 
of the United States a plenary, supreme, unlimited political juris- 
diction, paramount over courts, subject only to the judgment of 
the people of the United States, embracing within its scope every 
legislative measure necessary and proper to make it effectual ; and 
what is necessary and proper the Constitution refers, in the first 
place, to our judgment, subject to no revision but that of the peo- 
ple. It recognizes no other tribunal. It recognizes the judgment 
of no court. It refers to no authority except the judgment and 
will of the majority of Congress, and of the people on that judg- 
ment, if any appeal from it. It is one of that class of plenary 
powers of a political character conferred on Congress by the Con- 
stitution, such as the authority to admit new States into the Union, 
the authority to make rules and regulations for the government 
of the Territories of the United States. With reference to that 

Aa 



370 REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT IN THE REBELLIOUS STATES. 

class of cases, the Supreme Court, renouncing all right to judge on 
political questions, has said that these sections vested in the Con- 
gress of the United States plenary power over the subject-matters 
mentioned, subject only to the limitations contained in those sec- 
tions. In the section to which I refer there is, and almost from 
the very nature of the case there can be, no limitation. It is in- 
tended to meet all the emergencies of the national life. It is in- 
tended to apply to events which human imagination could scarcely 
have pictured. And yet the great wisdom of the framers of the 
Constitution has in no particular been rendered more remarkably 
apparent — although their imagination could scarcely have reached 
the belief in the possibility of events that are to us familiar as 
household words — than in their having laid by, in the arsenal of 
the Constitution, the weapons to deal with this great danger. 

What is the nature of this case with which we have to deal — 
the evil we must remedy, the danger we must avert? In other 
words, what is that monster of political wrong which is called se- 
cession? It is not, Mr. Speaker, domestic violence within the 
meaning of that clause of the Constitution, for the violence was 
the act of the people of the States through their government, and 
was the offspring of their free and unforced will. It is not inva- 
sion in the meaning of the Constitution, for no State has been in- 
vaded against the will of the government of the State by any pow- 
er except the United States marching to overthrow the usurpers 
of its territory. It is, therefore, the act of the people of the States, 
carrying with it all the consequences of such an act. And there- 
fore it must be either a legal revolution which makes them inde- 
pendent, and makes of the United States a foreign country, or it 
is a usurpation against the authority of the United States, the erec- 
tion of governments which do not recognize the Constitution of 
the United States, which the Constitution does not recognize, and, 
therefore, not republican governments of the States in rebellion. 
The latter is the view which all parties take of it. I do not un- 
derstand that any gentleman on the other side of the House says 
that any rebel government which does not recognize the Consti- 
tution of the United States, and which is not recognized by Con- 
gress, is a State government within the meaning of the Constitu- 
tion. Still less can it be said that there is a State government, 
republican or unrepublican, in the State of Tennessee, where there 
is no government of any kind, no civil authority, no organized 



REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT IN THE REBELLIOUS STATES. 371 

form of administration except that represented by the flag of the 
United States, obeying the will, and under the orders of the mili- 
tary officer in command. It is the language of the President of 
the United States in every proclamation, of Congress in every law 
on the statute-book, of both houses in their forms of proceedings, 
and of the courts of the United States in their administration of 
the law. It is the result of every principle of law, of every sug- 
gestion of political philosophy, that there can be no republican 
government within the limits of the United States that does not 
recognize, but does repudiate, the Constitution, and which the 
President and the Congress of the United States do not, on their 
part, recognize. Those that are here represented are the only 
governments existing within the limits of the United States. 
Those that are not here represented are not governments of the 
States, republican under the Constitution. And if they be not, 
then they are military usurpations, inaugurated as the permanent 
governments of the States, contrary to the supreme law of the 
land, arrayed in arms against the government of the United States ; 
and it is the duty, the first and highest duty, of the government to 
suppress and expel them. Congress must either expel, or recog- 
nize and support them. If it do not guarantee them, it is bound 
to expel them ; and they who are not ready to suppress them are 
bound to recognize them. 

The Supreme Court of the United States, in declining jurisdic- 
tion of political questions such as these in the famous Ehode Isl- 
and cases, declared by the mouth of Chief Justice Taney, in the 
presidency of John Tyler, during the Southern domination, in 
support of the acts of John Tyler, that a military government, es- 
tablished as the permanent government of a State, is not a repub- 
lican government in the meaning of the Constitution, and that it 
is the duty of Congress to suppress it. That duty Congress is now 
executing by its armies. He farther said in that case that it is 
the exclusive prerogative of Congress — of Congress, and not of 
the President — to determine what is and what is not the estab- 
lished government of the State ; and, to come to that conclusion, 
it must judge of what is and what is not a republican govern- 
ment, and its judgment is conclusive on the Supreme Court, which 
can not judge of the fact for itself, but accepts the fact declared 
by the political department of the government. 

We are now engaged in suppressing a military usurpation of 



372 REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT IN THE REBELLIOUS STATES. 

the authority of the State government. When that shall have 
been accomplished, there will be no form of State authority in 
existence which Congress can recognize. Our success will be the 
overthrow of all semblance of government in the rebel States. 
The government of the United States is then, in fact, the only gov- 
ernment existing in those States, and it is there charged to guar- 
antee them republican governments. 

What jurisdiction does the duty of guaranteeing a republican 
government confer, under such circumstances, upon Congress? 
What right does it give? What laws may it pass? What ob- 
jects may it accomplish? What conditions may it insist upon, 
and what judgment may it exercise in determining what it will 
do ? The duty of guaranteeing carries with it the right to pass 
all laws necessary and proper to guarantee. The duty of guar- 
anteeing means the duty to accomplish the result. It means that 
the republican government shall exist. It means that every op- 
position to republican government shall be put down. It means 
that every thing inconsistent with the permanent continuance of 
republican government shall be weeded out. It places in the 
hands of Congress the right to say what is and what is not, with 
all the light of experience and all the lessons of the past, incon- 
sistent, in its judgment, with the permanent continuance of repub- 
lican government; and if, in its judgment, any form of policy is 
radically and inherently inconsistent with the permanent and en- 
during peace of the country, with the permanent supremacy of 
republican government, and it have the manliness to say so, there 
is no power, judicial or executive, in the United States, that can 
even question this judgment but the people; and they can do it 
only by sending other representatives here to undo our work. 
The very language of the Constitution and the necessary logic of 
the case involves that consequence. The denial of the right of 
secession means that all the territory of the United States shall 
remain under the jurisdiction of the Constitution. If there can 
be no State government which does not recognize the Constitu- 
tion, and which the authorities of the United States do not recog- 
nize, then there are these alternatives, and these only : The rebel 
States must be governed by Congress till they submit and form a 
State government under the Constitution ; or Congress must rec- 
ognize State governments which do not recognize either Congress 
or the Constitution of the United States ; or there must be an en- 



REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT IN THE REBELLIOUS STATES. 373 

tire absence of all government in the rebel States ; and that is an- 
archy. To recognize a government which does not recognize the 
Constitution is absurd, for a government is not a Constitution ; 
and the recognition of a State government means the acknowl- 
edgment of men as governors, and legislators, and judges, actually 
invested with power to make laws, to judge of crimes, to convict 
the citizens of other States, to demand the surrender of fugitives 
from justice, to arm and command the militia, to require the 
United States to repress all opposition to its authority, and to pro- 
tect it from invasion — against our own armies; whose senators 
and representatives are entitled to seats in Congress, and whose 
electoral votes must be counted in the election of the President 
of a government which they disown and defy ! ! To accept the 
alternative of anarchy as the constitutional condition of a State is 
to assert the failure of the Constitution and the end of republican 
government. Until, therefore, Congress recognize a State govern- 
ment, organized under its auspices, there is no government in the 
rebel States except the authority of Congress. In the absence of 
all State government, the duty is imposed on Congress to provide 
by law to keep the peace, to administer justice, to watch over the 
transmission of decedents' estates, to sanction marriages — in a 
word, to administer civil government until the people shall, under 
its guidance, submit to the Constitution of the United States, and, 
under the laws which it shall impose, and on the conditions Con- 
gress may require, reorganize a republican government for them- 
selves, and Congress shall recognize that government. 

These, therefore, are the things which are involved in the duty 
of Congress to guarantee a republican government to the States. 
But we have not yet suppressed the insurrection. "We are still 
engaged in removing armed rebellion. Is it yet time to reor- 
ganize the State governments? or is there not an intermediate 
period in which sound legislative wisdom requires that the au- 
thority of Congress shall take possession of and temporarily con- 
trol the States now in rebellion until peace shall be restored and 
republican government can be established deliberately, undis- 
turbed by the sound or fear of arms, and under the guidance of 
law? 

What is the condition of the rebellion at this time ? I do not 
know that I express the opinions of gentlemen in this House, but, 
in my judgment, 



374 REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT IN THE REBELLIOUS STATES. 

"Doubtful it stands 
As two spent swimmers, that do cling together, 
And choke their act." 

Our arms have advanced deep into the regions of the rebellion ; 
we have occupied a vast area wrested from its' power, but to this 
day we have not expelled the rebels from any Slate they ever 
"held. 

There is no State some portion of whose territory is not press- 
ed by rebels in arms whom we have not expelled, or whom we can 
not expel. There is no portion of the rebel States where peace 
has been so far restored that our military power can be with- 
drawn for a moment without instant insurrection. There is no 
rebel State held now by the United States enough. of whose pop- 
ulation adheres to the Union to be intrusted with the government 
of the State. One tenth can not control nine tenths. Five tenths 
are nowhere willing to undertake the control of the other five 
tenths. Nowhere does such a proportion exist willing to do so, 
or, if willing to do so, who can safely be trusted with the great 
powers of a State government, carrying with it the right of taxa- 
tion, the existence of courts, the appointment of officers, the com- 
mand of the militia, and, besides the supremacy of the internal 
concerns of the State, the right to participate in the government 
of the United States by representatives, senators, and electors ap- 
pointed by their uncontrolled dictation. In West Virginia that 
authority exists and has been recognized. In no other State — 
the only one in respect to which a doubt can exist is Tennessee — 
in no other State is there such a portion of territory held, or any 
such portion of population under our control, or any such portion 
of it which is in our control inspired by such sentiments toward 
the government of the United States, so free from fear of the re- 
turning wave of rebel invasion, so assured of the continued su- 
premacy of the United States, that we ought to be willing to intrust 
them with this power. You can get a handful of men in the sev- 
eral States who would be glad to take the offices if protected by 
the troops of the United States, but you have nowhere a body of 
independent, loyal partisans of the United States, ready to meet 
the rebels in arms, ready to die for the republic, who claim the 
Constitution as their birthright, count all other privileges light in 
comparison, and resolved at every hazard to maintain it. 

The loyal masses of the South, of which we hear so much, what 



REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT IN THE REBELLIOUS STATES. 375 

was their temper at the outbreak of the rebellion? what is their 
temper now ? They did not want rebellion ; they voted against 
secession ; they acquiesced in the vote which decreed it ; they went 
with their State; they were content to accept what they did not 
prefer, but were unwilling to resist; they preferred Union with 
peace, but when Union and peace could not exist together, they 
yielded up the Union rather than make war to maintain it; and 
when the question was Union and war for it or disunion and war 
for it, they preferred war against the United States to war against 
the South. Whether it was that the doctrines of secession had 
ground themselves into the minds of men and become uncon- 
sciously the foundations upon which their thoughts rested ; or 
that they thought the interests of slavery must necessarily be sac- 
rificed in the event of a war, and they were not willing to sacrifice 
it; or that the long strife on the Negro Question had deadened 
their national feeling ; or that they had ceased to regard the peo- 
ple of the free States as fellow-citizens, and the horror of joining 
them against their Southern brethren oppressed them like a night- 
mare ; or the fear of making war at their own doors, and the draw- 
ing of the sword against their own friends and neighbors, or a 
conviction that the United States was no longer a power, but a 
mere semblance of authority — a Koi faineant, whose Mayors of 
the Palace were merely clothing the reality of power long wield- 
ed with the forms of sovereignty — whether each or all of these 
were the motive, the fact is that after they voted against secession, 
they acquiesced in the judgment of their friends and fellow-citi- 
zens. It is the most astounding spectacle in history that in the 
Southern States, with more than half of the- population opposed 
to it, a great revolution was effected against their wishes and 
against their votes, without a battle, a riot, or a protest in behalf 
of the beneficent government of their fathers — a revolution whose 
opponents hastened to lead it, without a martyr to the cause they 
deserted except the nameless heroes of the mountains of Ten- 
nessee, or a confessor of the faith they had avowed save the illus- 
trious Petigru of South Carolina ! 

Doubtful of the issues of the war, exhausted by bloodshed, 
anxious for peace — peace and independence — there are some who 
will accept peace and union, but they are not men who will draw 
the sword for the United States, and they would be equally con- 
tent with peace and independence. When the overthrow of the 



376 REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT IN THE REBELLIOUS STATES. 

rebellion is an accomplished fact, they will acquiesce; when there 
shall be neither hope nor fear of rebel supremacy, they will sub- 
mit to what we judge to be necessary for their good and for ours 
if we will peremptorily declare the conditions necessary to secure 
republican government. But it is the veriest ehild's dream to 
suppose that, SO long as this war lasts, so long as its flames blaze 
over the Southern country, any large portion of the Southern 
population is willing to east in its lot with the United States for 
good or evil, and assume now the responsibility that they dc- 
elined at the beginning, of standing with us for better, for worse, 
in ruin or in triumph. 

There is no fact that wc have learned from any one who has 
been in the South, and has come up from the darkness of that 
bottomless pit, which indicates such repentance. There is no fact 
that any one has stated on authority at all reliable that any re- 
speetable proportion of the people of the Southern States now in 
rebellion are willing to accept any terms that even our opponents 
on the other side of the House are willing to oiler them. 

It has been repeatedly asserted — Governor Seymour, of New 
York, in his message asserted — that peace could bo had upon any 
reasonable terms. That was his guess ; it was his w T ish; it was 
his fond, vain hope. In fact, there is no ground for such hope 
and to-day no man can stand before the American people and say 
that there is the least reason to suppose that any public man in 
the South has declared himself willing to consider peace on any 
conditions but that of independence. 

What, then, are w r e to do with the population in these States? 
To make "confusion worse confounded"' by erecting by the side 
of the hostile State government a new State government on the 
shifting sands of that whirlpool, to be supported by us while we 
arc there, and to turn its power against us when we are driven 
out? That would be to erect a new throne where 

" Clmos umpire sits. 
Ami by decision more embroils the fray 
By which he reigns." 

In my judgment, it is not safe to confide the vast authority of 
State governments to the doubtful loyalty of the rebel States un- 
til armed rebellion shall have been trampled into the dust, until 
every armed rebel shall have vanished from the State, until there 
shall be in the South no hope of independence and no fear of sub- 



REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT IN THE REBELLIOUS STATES. 377 

jection, until the United States is bearded by no military power, 
and the laws can be executed by courts and sheriffs without the 
ever-present menace of military authority. Until we have reach- 
ed that point, this bill proposes that the President shall appoint a 
civil governor to administer the government under the laws of the 
United States and the laws in force in the States respectively at 
the outbreak of the rebellion, subject of course to the necessities 
of military occupation. 

It is the policy of an ancient soldier that I adopt : 

"Trust none ; 
For oaths arc straws, men's faiths arc wafor-cakes, 
And hold-fast's the only ddg, my duck 
Therefore coveto be thy counselor." 

When military opposition shall have been suppressed — not 
merely paralyzed, driven into a corner, pushed back, but gone — 
the horrid vision of civil war vanished from the South, then call 
upon the people to reorganize in their own way, subject to the 
conditions that we think essential to our permanent peace, and to 
prevent the revival hereafter of the rebellion, a republican gov- 
ernment in the form that the people of the United States can 
agree to. 

Now, for that purpose, there arc three modes indicated. One 
is to remove the cause of the war by an alteration of the Consti- 
tution of the United States prohibiting slavery every where with- 
in its limits. That, sir, goes to the root of the matter, and should 
consecrate the nation's triumph. But there are thirty-four States 
— three fourths of them would be twenty -six. I believe there are 
twenty-five States represented in this Congress, so that we, on that 
basis, can not change the Constitution. It is, therefore, a condition 
precedent in that view of the case, that more States shall have 
governments organized within them. If it be assumed that the 
basis of calculation shall be three fourths of the States now repre- 
sented in Congress, I agree to that construction of the Constitu- 
tion, which I understand to be that of the Chairman of the Judi- 
ciary Committee, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Stevens], 
and not without countenance in high judicial quarters. I think 
it was never contemplated that the supreme political power should 
pass away from the government of the United States. But that 
view will probably encounter as much doubt as the bill before the 
House, besides involving serious delay ; and, under any circum- 



378 REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT IN THE REBELLIOUS STATES. 

stances, even upon that basis, it will be difficult to find three 
fourths of the States, with New Jersey, or Kentucky, or Mary- 
land, Delaware, or other States that might be mentioned, opposed 
to it under existing auspices, to adopt such a clause of the Consti- 
tution after we shall have agreed to it. 

If adopted, it still leaves the whole field of the. civil administra- 
tion of the States prior to the recognition of State governments, all 
laws necessary to the ascertainment of the will of the people, and 
all restrictions on the return to power of the leaders of the rebel- 
lion, wholly unprovided for. 

The amendment of the Constitution meets my hearty approval ; 
but it is not a remedy for the evils we must deal with. 

The next plan is that inaugurated by the President of the United 
States in the proclamation of the 8th of December, called the Am- 
nesty Proclamation. That proposes no guardianship of the United 
States over the reorganization of the governments, no law to pre- 
scribe who shall vote, no civil functionaries to see that the law is 
faithfully executed, no supervising authority to control and judge 
of the election. But if, in any manner, by the toleration of mar- 
tial law, lately proclaimed the fundamental law, under the dicta- 
tion of any military authority, or under the prescriptions of a pro- 
vost-marshal, something in the form of a government shall be pre- 
sented, represented to rest on the votes of one tenth of the popu- 
lation, the President will recognize that, provided it does not con- 
travene the proclamation of freedom and the laws of Congress ; 
and, to secure that, an oath is exacted. 

Now you will observe that there is no guarantee of law to watch 
over the organization of that government. It may combine all 
the population of a State ; it may combine one tenth only;, or ten 
governments may come competing for recognition at the door of 
the executive mansion. The executive authority is pledged; 
Congress is not pledged. It may be recognized by the military 
power, and may not be recognized by the civil power, so that it 
would have a doubtful existence, half civil and half military, nei- 
ther a temporary government by law of Congress nor a State 
government, something as unknown to the Constitution as the 
rebel government that refuses to recognize it. 

But, Mr. Speaker, let us regard its operation on a great funda- 
mental measure, the existence of slavery, the condition of future 
peace. How does it accomplish the final removal of slavery ? 



REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT IN THE REBELLIOUS STATES. 379 

How does it accomplish the reorganization of the government on 
the basis of universal freedom ? 

The only prescription is that the government shall not contra- 
vene the provisions of that proclamation. Sir, if that proclama- 
tion be valid, then we are relieved from all trouble on that score ; 
but if that proclamation be not valid, then the oath to support it is 
without legal sanction, for the President can ask no man to bind 
himself by an oath to support an unfounded proclamation or an 
unconstitutional law even for a moment, still less till it shall have 
been declared void by the Supreme Court of the United States. 
It is the paramount right of every American citizen to judge for 
himself, on his own responsibility, of his constitutional rights ; and 
an oath does not bind him to submit to that which is illegal. If, 
therefore, he shall have taken the oath, he can, in good conscience 
as well as in good law, disregard it the next moment ; so that, in 
point of fact, the law leaves us where the proclamation does ; it 
adds nothing to its legality, nothing to its force. 

But what is the proclamation which the new governments 
must not contravene? That certain negroes shall be free, and 
that certain other negroes shall remain slaves. The proclamation 
therefore recognizes the existence of slavery. It does just exactly 
what all the Constitutions of the rebel States prior to the rebellion 
did. It recognizes the existence of slavery, and they recognized 
the existence of slavery; and, therefore, the old Constitutions 
might be restored to-morrow without contravening the proclama- 
tion of freedom. Those Constitutions do not say that the Presi- 
dent shall 'not have the right, in the exercise of his military au- 
thority, to emancipate slaves within the States. They say noth- 
ing of the kind. They do not even establish slavery. There is 
not a Constitution in all the rebel States that formally declares 
slavery to be the supreme law of the land. They merely recog- 
nize it just as the proclamation recognizes its existence in parts of 
Virginia and in parts of Louisiana ; so that the one tenth of the 
population at whose hands the President proposes to accept and 
guarantee a State government, can elect officers under the old 
Constitution of their State in exactly the same terms and with ex- 
actly the same powers existing at the time of the rebellion, and 
may, under his proclamation, demand a recognition. No man 
will say that there is one word in their laws that contravenes 
what purports to be a paramount, not a subordinate order. So 



380 REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT IN THE REBELLIOUS STATES. 

soon as the State government is recognized, the operation of the 
proclamation becomes merely a judicial question. The right of a 
negro to his freedom is a legal right divesting a right of property, 
and is to be enforced in the courts; and then the question is what 
the courts will say about the proclamation. Is it valid or inval- 
id ? Does it of itself confer a legal right to freedom on negroes 
who were slaves? Is it within the authority of the executive? 
These are the only questions open under such a government ; and 
how local State courts, created by the Southern people, will de- 
cide such a question, no one can doubt ; for it is quite certain that 
the great mass of that population is devoted to the system of slave 
labor ; and though, if the question be whether they will give up 
slavery as the condition precedent to the restoration of a State 
government, they will abandon it, yet if it be whether they prefer 
to maintain or abolish slavery, there is not the least doubt that 
their voice would be almost unanimous for its maintenance. If 
they have the decision, we* know what it will be already. It is, 
therefore, under the scheme of the President, merely a judicial 
question, to be adjudged by judicial rules, and to be determined 
by the courts. It is a question whether each individual negro be 
free. It is a question whether the master has the right of seizure, 
or the negro can control himself. It is to be determined by the 
writ of habeas corpus. It is a question of personal right, not a 
question of political jurisdiction. Its fate in the State courts is 
certain. Its fate in the courts of the United States under existing 
laws is scarcely doubtful. I do not desire to argue the legality 
of the proclamation of freedom. I think it safer to make it law. 
But I wish to admonish gentlemen who rely on Dunmore's proc- 
lamation for the right of a military commander to free slaves in 
a civil war, that no slave is known ever to have claimed his free- 
dom under it, though, if valid, there must have been many per- 
sons so entitled, and the Courts of Virginia and of the United 
States were all open to them for its enforcement and their protec- 
tion. When they recite the opinions of John Quincy Adams, it 
must be remembered that he is on both sides of the question. He 
wrote instructions to our minister denying the right to emanci- 
pate, and claiming compensation of England for slaves carried off 
in the last war, and insisted upon the question being decided by 
the Emperor of Russia. And it is farther a material consideration 
that under that claim, by authority of the United States, and in 



KEPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT IN THE REBELLIOUS STATES. 381 

the name of that predecessor of Abraham Lincoln, England paid 
divers pounds sterling to the citizens of the United States for ne- 
groes she took, as he alleged, in contravention of the laws of war. 
If the proclamation free a slave, it diverts a right sanctioned by a 
law which he can not repeal ; and if it be not repealed, it would 
seem to protect the right it confers. Under the act of 1862 the 
President is authorized to use the negro population for the sup- 
pression of the rebellion ; while the rebellion lasts, his proclama- 
tion in law exempts the slave from the duty of obeying his mas- 
ter ; but after the rebellion is extinguished, the master's rights are 
in his own hands, subject only to the opinion of the courts on the 
legal effect of the proclamation, without a single precedent to sanc- 
tion it, and opposed by the solemn assertions of our government 
against the principle worked to authorize it. Gentlemen are less 
prudent or less in earnest than I am if they will risk the great 
issues involved in this question on such authorities before the 
courts of justice. 

By the bill we propose to preclude the judicial question by the 
solution of a political question. How so? By the paramount 
power of Congress to reorganize governments in those States, to 
impose such conditions as it thinks necessary to secure the per- 
manence of republican government, to refuse to recognize any 
governments there which do not prohibit slavery forever. Ay, 
gentlemen take the responsibility to say, in the face of those who 
clamor for speedy recognition of governments tolerating slavery, 
that the safety of the people of the United States is the supreme 
law ; that their will is the supreme rule of law, and that we are 
authorized to pronounce their will on this subject — take the re- 
sponsibility to say that we will revise the judgments of our an- 
cestors; that we have experience written in blood which they 
had not; that we find now, what they darkly doubted, that slavery 
is really, radically inconsistent with the permanence of republican 
governments ; and that, being charged by the supreme law of the 
land, on our conscience and judgment, to guarantee, that is, to 
continue, maintain, and enforce, if it exist, to institute and restore 
when overthrown, republican governments throughout the broad 
limits of the republic, we will weed out every element of their 
policy which we think incompatible with its permanence and en- 
durance. The purpose of the bill is to preclude the judicial ques- 
tion of the validity and effect of the President's proclamation by 



382 REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT IN THE REBELLIOUS STATES. 

the decision of the jiolitical authority in reorganizing the State 
governments. It makes the rule of decision the provisions of the 
State Constitution, which, when recognized by Congress, can be 
questioned in no court; and it adds to the authority of the proc- 
lamation the sanction of Congress. If gentlemen say that the 
Constitution does not bear that construction, we will go before 
the people of the United States on that question, and by their 
judgment we will abide. 

Gentlemen must deny the jurisdiction of Congress over the 
States where there are no recognized governments, or place a 
bound or limit to the discretion of Congress. Until gentlemen 
find such a limit to the discretion of Congress under the para- 
mount duty imposed, not conferred, upon Congress to guarantee 
republican governments, until gentlemen draw their line of de- 
marcation and show that Congress has not the jurisdiction to re- 
move what it thinks incompatible with the permanence of repub- 
lican governments, I shall rest the argument where it is now. 
When they shall have attempted to lay down their line of demar- 
cation, I will be ready to meet them with such opinions of the 
founders of the government, and those who in their footsteps 
have most wisely expounded its provisions, as I may be able 
to find. 

And if the sentiments of State pride and State rights be touched 
by the assertion of this wide discretion, which men may deny but 
can not expunge, I would admonish those who dislike it that it is 
a jurisdiction which nothing but the dereliction of the States can 
wake into activity, and they who wish to exclude it from their 
limits have only not to give occasion for its exercise by renounc- 
ing obedience to the Constitution and pulling down their own 
State governments. But now the jurisdiction has attached in all 
the rebel States'. Until Congress has assented, there is no State 
government in any rebel State, and none will be recognized ex- 
cept such as recognize the power of the United States ; so that 
we come down to this : whether we — and when I say we, I mean 
we upon this side of the House, who are firmly, thoroughly, and 
honestly convinced that the time has come not merely to strike 
the arms from the hands of the rebels, but to strike the fetters 
from the arms of the slaves, and remove that domineering and 
cohesive power without which we could have had no rebellion, 
and which now is its animating spirit, and which will die when it 



REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT IN THE REBELLIOUS STATES. 333 

( ]i es — whether we will exert the power which the Constitution 
confers upon us, and whether in our judgment — not in the judg- 
ment of our enemies — who have a majority in this House and a 
majority in the Senate; in our judgment, who now represent a 
majority of the people of the United States; in our judgment, 
who now support the executive in this great war; whether in our 
judgment it is not time to assert that authority. 

And if it be time, then all I ask in conclusion is, that gentlemen 
will go and read that great argument of Daniel Webster in the 
llhodc Island case before the Supreme Court of the United States, 
where he met this semi-revolutionary attempt to count heads and 
call that the people, and maintained — and so the Supreme Court 
judged when it refused to take jurisdiction of the question — that 
thegrcat political law of America is that every change of govern- 
ment shall be conducted under the supervising authority of some 
existing legislative body throwing the protection of law around 
the polls, defining the rights of voters, protecting them in the ex- 
ercise of the elective franchise, guarding against fraud, repelling 
violence, and appointing arbiters to pronounce the result and de- 
clare the persons chosen by the people. And he says, greatly to 
the honor of the American people, it would take him to the going 
down of the sun to enumerate the instances in which almost every 
Constitution in the United States has been changed without one 
ever having been changed by a revolutionary process, not under 
the a3gis of law, not guided by a pre-existing political authority. 
lie maintained it to be the great fundamental principle of the 
American government that legislation shall guide every political 
change, and that it assumes that somewhere within the United 
States there is always a permanent, organized legal authority 
which shall guide the tottering footsteps of those who seek to re- 
store governments which are disorganized and broken down. 

This bill is an effort to inaugurate in this great emergency, and 
to apply to the benefit of ourselves and our posterity, this great 
principle of American political law, which was expounded by the 
first greatest expounder of the Constitution. 



ON EMANCIPATION IN MAEYLAND. 

Meantime the Legislature of Maryland had authorized the submis- 
sion to the people of the question of a Convention for altering the Con- 
stitution of the State, and the canvass was about to commence as to 
delegates to that Convention, if approved, in favor of emancipation. 

A large meeting was held in the Maryland Institute, in Baltimore, on 
the 1st of April, 18G4, in pursuance of a call by the Unconditional Union 
State Central Committee to hear these questions discussed. On that 
occasion Mr. Davis spoke as follows : * 

Fellow-citizens of Maryland, — "We are now, I think, about 
at the end of the canvasses which so long have agitated Maryland, 
in one aspect or another, of the Negro Question. Last fall the 
people of Maryland indicated by an almost unprecedented major- 
ity their conviction that the times required that Maryland should 
be put upon the same basis of free institutions which have wrought 
such miracles of prosperity among our Northern sisters. (Ap- 
plause.) 

They gave that desire by twenty thousand majority. Their 
will was very nearly defeated by the selection of their candidates. 
The people found themselves with a Legislature opposed to them 
upon every material point of interest; a doubtful majority against 
them in the Lower House ; a decided and resolute majority against 
them in the Senate ; the validity of the election attacked by its 
enemies, who ascribed its successes to the bayonets of "the tyrant 
Schenck !" The governor had thrown obstacles in the path of 
our success, and in his message to the Legislature he smeared the 
election all over with the imputation of illegality. 

The enemy held possession of both branches of the Legislature, 
but they did not dare to unseat one man elected at that " void" 
election. They whined, they shuffled, they evaded, they strug- 
gled and held back, but they did not dare to adjourn without 
passing our Convention Bill ; and now we have the question di- 
rectly before us, and you, gentlemen, have the decision of it in 
your hands. 



ON EMANCIPATION IN MARYLAND. 335 

We have made our nominations; our enemies have made theirs; 
and the question is, which of the two are to fill the seats of the 
Convention ? Are we to have a Convention opposed to emanci- 
pation, as the Legislature was opposed to emancipation, and trust' 
to the moral power of the coercion of the popular vote to compel 
them to discharge their duties ? Or shall we have a Convention 
composed of the gentlemen we have nominated, who go there for 
the purpose of executing the will that the people have expressed, 
and who, when they get there, will have the manliness and the 
resolution to act up to the duties that have been prescribed for 
them ? That, and that only, is the question. 

There are other questions that are thrown before you for the 
purpose of deluding you, as has been the habit heretofore in all 
political canvasses. You have been told that other questions than 
the real one are the real questions you are called upon to determ- 
ine ; and what little I have to say here to-night is mainly for the 
purpose of clearing up all misapprehensions on that subject — of 
simply stating the question to you for you to decide, and then 
leave to the distinguished gentlemen who have honored us by 
their company this evening the enforcement of the views which 
are appropriate to the occasion. 

The slavery interest, of course, struggles vigorously to maintain 
its domination. It has been heretofore your master, as well as the 
master of its slaves. One fourth of the people of the State have 
ruled it by the existing Constitution. They have used their pow- 
er to take to themselves the lion's share of our political honor, and 
to cast upon you the ass's share of every political burden. The 
political power has been down in the rotten-borough counties of 
St. Mary's, Charles, Calvert, Prince George's, and Anne Arundel, 
and over in Somerset, Talbot, and Queen Anne's. Their slaves 
have been exempted from equal taxation. 

Their laws have compensated slaveholders every where for their 
slaves when they forfeited their lives by violation of the law. The 
taxes have been imposed upon the city of Baltimore ; the taxes 
have been imposed upon the northern and western portions of the 
State. The laws have been passed at the dictation of the south- 
ern portion ; the burdens have been borne by the northern por- 
tion. In the south, south of the Patapsco Eiver and south of the 
Sassafras Eiver, you have about one fourth of the white popula- 
tion of the State, and you have one half of all its political power. 

Bb 



386 ON EMANCIPATION IN MARYLAND. 

I desire gentlemen in that part of the State to know that the 
first practical fruit we expect to reap from the breaking down of 
the slavery system is to break down the domination of the power 
in those masters (applause) ; to redistribute political power in the 
State ; to reassert the right of numbers ; to restore the disturbed 
balance of popular power ; to make those who are in the minority 
obey the will of those who are in the majority, and not, as at pres- 
ent, permit them to hold a veto upon your will, and wield a ma- 
jority in the event of their being able to buy, or coax, or bully 
one or two votes in the other House against you. 

That is what we mean to accomplish in the first place. That 
they do not like, and therefore their game is upon divers pretexts 
to prevent the calling of a Convention, for they know perfectly 
well that there is small chance of their controlling the Conven- 
tion if it shall happen to be called. They have set up the claim 
for State compensation for their worthless negroes, and they ex- 
pect to sweep the slaveholding regions of the State, and cause the 
sixteen or eighteen millions of dollars of surplus that will be raised 
in the free part of the State to be scattered broadcast in the slave 
part of the State, and therefore they have a great interest to make 
it appear that slaves are property, not merely by the conventional 
law, but in the nature of things, and that they are entitled to com- 
pensation when that property ceases by the law to be property. 
That carries a very powerful influence in all the slaveholding 
parts of the State. Here in the city of Baltimore, and then in the 
large free counties of Washington, and Frederick, and Alleghany, 
they come with a more insidious plea: " You, gentlemen, here, 
are in favor of emancipation, and uncompensated emancipation, 
but the Convention is called upon the basis of the old apportion- 
ment, and we may elect a majority of it ; therefore you had better 
vote against calling a Convention to save yourselves against the 
dangers of the burdens of compensation." And this is having its 
effect on the friends of emancipation every where. 

Now all that I desire to say on that topic is this one plain, sim- 
ple fact: If they carry every slaveholding county in the State 
they elect only half the Convention, and with half the Convention 
they can pass no ordinance. In the next place, whatever ordi- 
nance they may pass as part of the Constitution has to be submit- 
ted to the vote of the people for their sanction, and the vote of 
the city of Baltimore alone will defeat any bill for compensation. 



ON EMANCIPATION IN MARYLAND. 337 

(Great applause.) And, in the next place, they will not have 
half the Convention. (Eenewed applause.) 

That is their day-dream ; ay, and it is their last dream, for the 
day of dreams has gone and the day of facts has come. Let the 
people remember that in the Africa of the Eastern Shore, my 
friend, Mr. Creswell, now fills the seat that Mr. Crisfield — that 
the Compensationists were obliged to abandon (applause) — and 
did it on open canvass in the face of the people, arrayed the in- 
terest and the power of the non-slaveholder against the wealthy 
slaveholder, teaching them that every man counts one at the polls, 
and a rich man counts no more. (Great applause.) 

Upon that simple rule of political arithmetic, my friend Mr. 
Creswell occupies the seat that Mr. Crisfield competed for. From 
that fact, I desire our friends in the southern counties to estimate 
the chances of a tie in the Constitutional Convention. I aided in 
my humble way my friend Mr. Creswell in his canvass. I went 
down into the deep regions of the dominion of slavery (laughter), 
where manufactures are unknown, and money is hardly seen by 
poor men, who wear homespun and have to walk twenty miles to 
get to our political meetings, and it was these men who, for three 
generations — they and their ancestors — had been voting at the 
dictation of the leading gentlemen of their regions, who ride on 
their horses to the election, and used formerly to give out their 
wagons to carry their poorer neighbors there, but declined on this 
occasion, because they knew their opinions ; it was in that region 
that by our aid those men came forward and cast their first inde- 
pendent vote, for their own freedom first, and the freedom of the 
negro afterward. (Applause.) 

Now I commend to those gentlemen a hopeful aspect of their 
cause ; look at the result. Twenty thousand majority in Mary- 
land for emancipation on an issue forced upon us (applause); 
Governor Thomas elected for the second time without an oppo- 
nent daring to meet him ; Mr. Webster candidly coming to our 
platform, accepting our principles, and nobody finding pluck to 
meet him in his district ; men in high position struggling for an 
opponent to me up to within a week of the election, and nobody 
willing to take the chance of beating me (applause) ; Mr. Creswell 
met by the ablest man of the Eastern Shore, a gentleman of large 
property, a large landholder, a large negro-holder, with a national 
reputation, leaning to the Copperhead style of politics, intensely 



^88 ON EMANCIPATION IN MARYLAND. 

conservative, fearful that the President and the administration 
were going too far, and might put down the rebellion too rapidly 
and too vigorously by rooting out its cause — that man represent- 
ing in its milder and only presentable type before the people of 
Maryland the Compensationist, the tardy Gradual Emancipation- 
ist, the men who thought the offer of ten millions of dollars was 
an insult, and the other class of men who thought it ought to be 
" spit upon." . This man was beaten by Mr. Creswell, who argued 
at every man's door that the time for emancipation, both of black 
and white, from the slavery domination was come. (Applause.) 

And now they come before the people of Maryland, hoping 
that, under the mild rule which it was supposed might prevail at 
Washington, all the secesh, together with the pro-slavery part of 
the Union body of the citizens, might enable them to save their 
property, or burden you with paying their estimated value. I 
need only say to gentlemen what now every one here sees, that 
after all the clamor, after all the imputations, after all the insults, 
after all the wretched affidavits, after all the flimsy secesh certifi- 
cates, after the howl in the Legislature against the last election, 
the principle stands as Maryland law, by the vote of our enemies 
in the Legislature of Maryland, that men who are traitors to their 
country, and can be found out, have no part in our political com- 
munity. (Great applause.) That Legislature has more than rat- 
ified my declaration that when we speak of political power in 
Maryland, we do not count traitors as part of that people in Ma- 
ryland ; we do not mean that they shall be counted as part of that 
power (great applause), and that the only question the people of 
Maryland will listen to for an instant on that point is whether the 
individual who offers his vote is or is not faithful to the govern- 
ment of his fathers ? If he is unfaithful, he can not be allowed to 
soil the ballot-box of Maryland. (Great applause.) If he is faith- 
ful, welcome, though, he be perverse as Vallandigham. (Laughter.) 

But, according to the opinion of certain persons, we who are for 
the Convention are in favor of " negro equality," in favor of ne- 
gro political privileges ; and these gentlemen — our enemies — arc 
exceedingly exercised lest that should become the law of Mary- 
land. Nay, they say here they are as good emancipators as I am 
— they know they can not be any better — so they take me as the 
standard (laughter), but they do not go quite as for. Of course 
not. 



ON EMANCIPATION IN MARYLAND. 389 

They were dragged thus far. They did not go at all ; they 
were dragged, they were compelled, they were overborne by the 
overwhelming power of the popular vote to confess and profess 
what now they do not believe. If you trust them, they will cheat 
you. And these men have the inconceivable impudence to say 
they do not go as far as I do because they are not in favor of ne- 
gro equality, and that I am, and that the gentlemen who act with 
me are. They do not know, when they speak of the gentlemen 
with whom I act, that they are libeling the great body of the peo- 
ple of Maryland. They do not know, when they speak of the 
gentlemen who stand with me, that they are the men who beat 
them by 20,000 majority last fall. (Applause.) 

They do not know, when they attempt to speak of the opinions 
that I express, that they speak of the opinions ratified, against 
their libels, at the ballot-box by the people of Maryland ; and if 
they want to know my opinion upon negro equality, I can tell 
them my opinion upon that as upon any other question without 
any trouble at all. I am perfectly content that the negro shall 
be equal with them, but not with me or my friends. (Tremen- 
dous applause.) 

In my judgment, they that are afraid of negro equality are not 
much above it now. Do they understand that ? (Laughter.) In 
my judgment, they that are afraid of marrying a negro woman 
had better go to the Legislature and petition for a law to punish 
them if they are guilty of that weakness. (Laughter.) 

But when gentlemen presume, in any of their wretched political 
circulars or speeches to the people of Maryland, to say that they 
do not go as far as I because I am in favor of negro equality, they 
libel me. They know that it is one of the paltry, dirty tricks to 
cheat men who they suppose are fools enough to be cheated. 
They know that no man in Maryland, from one end of it to the 
other, raises that question excepting themselves. They know that 
they raise it merely to delude. They know that they raise that 
question in the hope that they can get some blacking to stick 
on the character that they have been persistently attempting to 
smear for ten years, and which they have not dimmed yet. (Ap- 
plause.) 

What then ? " Compensation for the invaluable right of prop- 
erty" — the touching of the " inalienable right of property !" And 
who are they that have the insolence to make this claim? Men 



390 ON EMANCIPATION IN MARYLAND. 

who stand upon the statute-books of Maryland for the last forty 
years as plunderers of the public purse for their private benefit; 
men who passed a law to say that the property which they now 
want to get within the protection of the law of property should 
not be brought within the limits of the burdens of property, for 
their special benefit — property which they by formal law exempt- 
ed from the sworn appraisers of the law — property which in the 
counties they have said shall be valued at an arbitrary and a dis- 
gracefully inadequate valuation — property which now, after it is 
gone, they estimate at thirty millions of dollars, and two years 
ago, when it was to be taxed, the Comptroller's Ecport shows they 
estimated at fourteen millions of dollars. When they talk of the 
rights of property and of pay for their negroes, let them open their 
accounts with the Comptroller of the State of Maryland, and pay 
back the plundered arrearages of thirty years of partial legislation. 
(Great applause.) 

I do not know that they will find a paymaster in this audience; 
I do not know that they will find one in the State of Maryland ; 
and I rather incline to think that the stupidity that prevailed over 
them, the judicial blindness that rested upon them, made them 
spurn the only chance they ever had of receiving any thing as a 
ransom for their slaves. For, gentlemen, you will remember I 
have a maliciously long memory, unfortunately (laughter); these 
gentlemen forget every three months ; I take it that the world 
whirls so fast that they become giddy and do not know which 
way they arc looking now ; but they forget that it has not been 
more than a year and a half since I endeavored to induce Congress 
to execute the proposal of the President and give $10,000,000 to 
the slaveholders of Maryland ; and they seem to have forgotten 
that Mr. Anthony Kennedy, the representative of the pro-slavery 
interest, said that he would spit upon your ten millions of dollars, 
and that Governor Hicks said that it was an insult which he could 
not pocket. 

Such is the course of events, so rapidly docs the tide run, so 
swiftly do men and opinions change, that the result of our victory 
last year has been to drive every one of these gentlemen now to 
clamor for compensation, part from the State, but most of them 
from the general government. 

Fellow-citizens, allow me to say that repentance on the day of 
judgment will as surely carry them to heaven as repentance now 



ON EMANCIPATION IN MARYLAND. 391 

will bring them compensation from the general government. 
(Laughter and applause.) 

The day of death is past. Between them and compensation the 
great gulf is fixed. The rich man now is on one side of that gulf 
and Lazarus upon the other, and I do not know that there is 
much communication between them. (Laughter and applause.) 

Hopeless, wretched, miserable, praying to a god that once smiled 
on them and now frowns, they say, " Give us emancipation with 
compensation by the government." Of course they do ; but the 
people are for emancipation without compensation by the govern- 
ment, and the people are the stronger of the two. (Great ap- 
plause.) 

And bow are they going to get it? They have been so in the 
habit of working for themselves in political life that they forget 
that the proposal of the President to them in Maryland was a 
bargain that had two sides to it. It was intended to promote the 
suppression of the rebellion. The purpose was to save a thou- 
sand millions of dollars. The purpose was to save a year of an- 
archy and bloodshed. The year has gone. The thousand mil- 
lions of dollars are sunk in the ruts of our artillery in the South. 
The blood is shed. The blood that pays the ransom of the negro 
is poured out, and the money of the government went with it- 
(Great applause.) 

It is just as well to look facts in the face as not. I say they 
arc going to have — in my judgment they will have, in my pur- 
pose they shall have — no compensation from the government of 
the United States if I can avert it. (Applause.) They refused 
the offer when it was made, and when the acceptance of it would 
have saved thousands of lives and shortened this desolating rebel- 
lion ; they spurned it, scoffed at it, scouted those who proposed it, 
did their best to beat and defeat the project in the councils of the 
nation, and now they may eat the bitter fruits of their folly. 

Why should the United States pay for a dead dog any more 
than the people of Maryland ? They do not free their slaves now 
because they want to do so, but they free them because the peo- 
ple of Maryland have said they shall be free ; and after that is 
said, " Oh, well, if they are to be free, we should like to be com- 
pensated for them." Compensated for what? For that which is 
nothing by the fiat of the people, which only awaits the forms of 
law — compensated ' for an absolute interest which only has six 



392 ON EMANCIPATION IN MARYLAND. 

months of life remaining in it — compensated for slaves made 
valueless as a house is reduced to no value by a conflagration 

which burns it down ! 

Why should any body pay them? They have no claim in 
morals. The United States never granted them slave property; 
It merely said, "If it runs away it shall be delivered up," but not 
that if the people of Maryland see lit to repeal the law allowing 
slavery, the government will continue to consider as property 
what the people of Maryland refuse any longer themselves to con- 
sider as property, and that they will pay as property for what the 
people oi^ Maryland say shall no longer be property. Upon what 
ground is it? It is a political institution. It is like the tariff 
which now, twice or three times in the limit of my life, has made 
and destroyed values infinitely greater than the value of the slave 
property of Maryland. 

South Carolina and all the South have twice or thrice, within 
the limits of my life, rejoiced over the prostration of a tariff sys- 
tem, the mere repeal oi^ which effaced millions and millions of 
dollars throughout all of New England and all the free States; 
but did ever any bod)- think that because the course of politics 
had changed, because the current policy of the government had 
changed, because a law which the Congress placed upon the stat- 
ute-book another Congress had seen fit to repeal, therefore we 
must compensate the broken manufacturers of Massachusetts and 
the iron-dealers of Pennsylvania or Maryland? Yet that is ex- 
actly what we are asked to do now. 

Negroes are no more property by the law of nature than white 
men. White men agreed between themselves that they should 
be so regarded, and they took the chances of the insurance, and 
they insured themselves beforehand against the damage of the ul- 
timate conflagration which is now consuming them, by robbing 
the State treasury of the taxes upon their real value. That is 
their compensation. Their compensation is the improved value 
of their lands. Their compensation is four generations of uncom- 
pensated labor. Their compensation is the cleared lands of all 
Southern Maryland, where every thing that smiles and blossoms 
is the w T ork of the negro that they tore from Africa. 

Because they have enjoyed his uncompensated labor for four 
generations, shall we now T give them a commutation of value? 
I do not know what the people of Maryland will say on that sub- 



ON EMANCIPATION IN MARYLAND. 393 

ject, but I have a very definite opinion upon what I will help 
them to say, and that is, that they have had the value which they 
had no right to for four generations, and they may rest upon that. 
II' they suppose that we are fool.-; enough to go into the next 
presidential canvass with our necks burdened down by the mill- 
stone of compensation for all the property destroyed by the gov« 
eminent in the course of this terrible war, slaves included, they 
are mistaken; the candidate that goes into the canvass upon that 
Oasis goes dedicated to the ruin; for no mass, no considerable, no 
respectable proportion of the people of the States of America will 
ever agree to double the war debt, for all slaveholders will per- 
suade doubting commissioners that they were loyal, and should re- 
ceive compensation for the very property which their brothers, 
and friends, and neighbors rebelled to secure. (Applause.) 

Tli' :arccly a household where there is not one dead; 

there is scarcely a household where children are not lacking for 
some of the comforts of life by reason of this great war, and their 
wants must not be increased to give luxuries to the rich slavehold- 
ers. The negro is paid for by the hardships that men arc now en- 
during. LTe is paid for by the increased price of labor, the in- 
creased price of land and bread, the withdrawal of labor from the 
free States, the converting of an immense population into an army. 
This is the pay for it. It is paid for by the iniquity of the rebel- 
lion, and they will get no other pay but the suppression of the 
rebellion. (Great applause.) 

Now, my friends, as usual, I have said just what I think is com- 
ing to pass. I have no doubt that the cunning contrivers of fu- 
ture political platforms will in the course of a year or two have a 
wretched, shriveled party in some corner of Maryland called the 
"Anti-Negro-Equality Party," and they will be rushing out fran- 
tically into the streets of Baltimore, and to the cross-roads, and 
the groggery -shops of the southern part of the State, to get some- 
body to be foolish enough to elect a man because he is opposed 
to negro equality, without any body's proposing it on the other 
side ; and, foreseeing that that is about to be the case, I have 
thought it might just be convenient at this time to say that they 
who are preparing for that canvass are attempting to delude peo- 
ple whom they can not delude, and are preparing for a canvass in 
which they will receive a worse castigation than in that of the last 
fall. 



394: ON EMANCIPATION IN MARYLAND. 

Fellow-citizens, only one word in conclusion. All that I beg 
of you is this : when the day of election comes round, you will 
take the trouble, you and your friends, to walk to the polls, so that 
Baltimore may have the benefit of the power of her enormous 
population, that she may be secure in carrying the Convention, 
which, not merely rids her commercial wealth of the burden of 
being in a slave State, but restores to her her political equality 
with all the free regions of the State. It requires only that we 
shall turn oal, and the result is accomplished ; and if we do not 
turn out, wc may remain as we arc. 

Gentlemen, I now yield in order that others may be introduced 
to you. 



THE EMPIRE OF MEXICO. 

On the 4 th of April Mr. Davis reported, from the Committee on For- 
eign Affairs, a joint resolution declaring 

"That the Congress of the United States were unwilling by si- 
lence to leave the nations of the world under the impression that 
they are indifferent spectators of the deplorable events* now trans- 
piring in the Republic of Mexico ; and that they therefore think 
fit to declare that it does not accord with the policy of the United 
States to acknowledge any monarchical government erected on 
the ruins of any republican government under the auspices of any 
European power." 

In supporting this resolution, Mr. Davis said : 

" We inaugurate another policy than that which characterized 
the Democratic party ere the power passed from beneath their 
feet. The Democratic policy in dealing with our Republican breth- 
ren in South America and in Mexico has been that of the wolf to 
the lamb. Their growl was to frighten foreign wolves from the 
prey they marked for their own ; they hectored, bullied, and plun- 
dered them, without even stretching out the hand of republican 
sympathy to appease their dissensions or consolidate their power. 
I suppose the treaty made by Mr. M'Lanc was intended to smooth 
the way for the intrusion into Mexico of the Southern interests, 
now in rebellion against the United States. It afforded Southern 
men the opportunity, after breaking away from the Union, to fast- 
en themselves upon Mexico. The provisions of that treaty se- 
cured such a right of interference and intermeddling in the affairs 
of Mexico as would have been contrary to the policy of this gov- 
ernment to exercise, unless it was with the farther purpose of re- 
ducing Mexico to the condition of a province. If my friend from 
Ohio had expressed his regret at the failure of the ratification by 

* Alluding to the war between Juarez, the constitutional President, mid the 
French, intervening to place and maintain there the Archduke Maximilian under 
the title of emperor. 



396 THE EMPIRE OF MEXICO. 

the Senate of the treaty negotiated by Mr. Corwin, granting pecun- 
iary aid to the government of Mexico, which would, in all proba- 
bility, have prevented this European intervention, I should have 
heartily agreed with him. 

"But, sir, that time has already passed. The war is going on, 
and we wish, before another usurper has placed his foot upon 
Mexican soil, to let him understand, whether he be of the house 
of Austria, or of the family which for the present disposes of the 
forces of France — both the well-known enemies of republican gov- 
ernment, and the last now making war to overturn the republican 
government of Mexico and establish upon its ruins a monarchical 
government — that that government will not be recognized by us. 

" Our policy is very different from the Democratic policy. We 
wish to cultivate friendship with our republican brethren of Mex- 
ico and South America, to aid in consolidating republican princi- 
ples, to retain popular government in all this continent from the 
fangs of monarchical or aristocratic power, and to lead the sister- 
hood of American republics in the paths of peace, prosperity, and 
power." 

The resolution was passed unanimously. Mr. Davis afterward moved 
(May 23) that the President be requested to communicate to the House 
any explanation given by the government to the French government re- 
specting the sense and bearing of the above joint resolution ; and the cor- 
respondence of the Secretary of State with the United States minister 
in Paris in relation thei-eto was communicated, by which it appeared that 
the Secretary had rightly stated the effect of such joint resolution, acted 
on by the House only, not having passed the Senate, and not having 
received the sanction of the President. 



EXPULSION OF ME. LONG, OF OHIO. 

On the 9th of April the Speaker offered a resolution for the expulsion 
of Mr. Long, of Ohio, "for having openly avowed himself, in presence of 
the House, in favor of recognizing the Confederate States, now in armed 
rebellion, and, in so avowing himself, having violated his oath as a mem- 
ber of this House, that he had given no aid, countenance, counsel, or en- 
couragement to persons engaged in armed hostility to the United States." 

On the 11th of April, 18G4, Mr. Davis addressed the House on this 
resolution in the following speech : 

Mr. Speaker, — A singular disposition has been manifested to 
avoid the question before the House. I desire to call your atten- 
tion to that question before I follow the gentlemen on the other 
side in the rather irrelevant discussion in which they have in- 
dulged. 

It is not whether in the LTouse of Eepresentatives of the United 
States of America freedom of opinion is secured by law, nor wheth- 
er the freedom of speech and of the press is the constitutional right 
of the American citizen, but whether the gentleman who delivered 
the speech now in question is a fit and worthy member of this 
House ; not whether, out of doors, in his private capacity, he would 
be entitled to entertain, and as an individual to express, the opin- 
ions which he has uttered here, but whether as a legislator charged 
to protect the interests of the people, sworn to maintain the Con- 
stitution of the United States, he has not avowed a purpose incon- 
sistent with those duties, a resolution not to maintain but to de- 
stroy ; a determination not to defend but to yield up undefended 
to the enemies of the United States what he was sent here to pro- 
tect. That is the question, and that is the only question which 
has not been discussed by the defenders of the gentleman from 
Ohio. 

They tell us words can not be the subject of animadversion 
under the rules of this House, nor under the Constitution of the 
United States ! What becomes of the resolution declaring the 
member from Maryland [Mr. Harris] to be an unworthy member 



398 EXPULSION OF MR. LONG, OF OHIO. 

of this House, adopted by their votes on Saturday ? What be- 
comes of the solemn adjudication as far back as 1842, when a 
majority of this House asserted the right to censure Joshua E. 
Giddings, not for introducing a petition to dissolve the Union, but 
for offering resolutions for the consideration of this House declar- 
ing that the mutineers of the Creole were not responsible for any 
criminal act under the laws of the United States, interpreted by 
the resolution of censure into a justification of mutiny and murder ? 

It is the judgment of this House, and therefore not necessary to 
be argued by me, that words may prove criminality when they 
reveal a criminal purpose ; and, if they are sufficiently criminal, 
that they may be visited first by censure, and, if they judge it 
necessary to the public safety, by expulsion from the House. I 
do not envy the gentlemen who refused to expel the gentleman 
from Maryland for language uttered in the presence of us all, 
which they immediately after voted to declare tended and was 
designed to give aid and encouragement to the public enemies of 
the nation, and therefore he was an unworthy member of the 
House. Sir, it would seem to have been the logical conclusion 
that, if he is an unworthy member of the House, he ought not to 
be suffered to remain in it, and that gentlemen who so thought 
would have so said on the first vote for expulsion. How gentle- 
men will reconcile that glaring inconsistency to their constituents ; 
how they who have declared the gentleman from Maryland an 
unworthy member, but that he should remain a member — who 
asserted the right to punish by inflicting punishment, but re- 
fused the only adequate penalty for the offense of which they 
voted him guilty, will justify themselves in the face of their own 
votes, it is for them to consider. It would be cruel to aggravate 
their embarrassments by any observations. Ah hac scabie tenea- 
mus ungues. 

But it remains conceded by the votes of our opponents that, 
in spite of the Constitution of the United States, in spite of the 
conceded freedom of opinion, in spite of the conceded freedom of 
speech, words are and may be here, not out of doors, but here in 
this House, here upon a subject before the House for considera- 
tion, here where every body has a right to express his views upon 
every measure before the House, words are and have been ad- 
judged by the votes of our opponents to be criminal, to be pun- 
ishable, and they have been punished within two days. 



EXPULSION OF MR. LONG, OF OHIO. 399 

The measure of judgment is a matter of discretion. The Con- 
stitution sajs that with the consent of two thirds either House 
may expel a member ; that means not capriciously, but for some 
wrong, for misconduct, for acts, for words, for purposes, for avow- 
als inconsistent with his duty on this floor, tending to show that 
he is not a safe depositary of the great powers of a representa- 
tive ; and the only constitutional criterion of what is and what is 
not adequate cause of expulsion is the judgment of two thirds of 
this House. 

If that be so, the only farther question we have to ask is wheth- 
er the gentleman from Ohio, respectable as he is in his private re- 
lations, respectable as has been his conduct in this House, hon- 
estly as his convictions may be entertained, has not placed him- 
self beyond the pale of that protection which this House accords 
to freedom of speech, not by speaking as he ought not to have 
spoken, but by avowing himself in favor of the destruction of the 
nation. 

Now, what is the charge against him ? That his judgment is 
that there are but two alternatives: one, the extermination of, the 
enemies of the United States, and the other the destruction of the 
United States itself, which he puts in the form of a recognition of 
the Southern States as an independent government. And, not 
resting on that mere declaration of opinion and the alternative 
resting in his own mind, he goes farther, and says that of the two 
he preferred the latter. That means, % here a representative, 
charged and sworn to the extent of my whole influence in the leg- 
islation of this House to protect and maintain the integrity of 
the nation, have come to the conclusion, in the midst of a great 
war, when the existence of the nation is at stake, that, rather than 
exterminate the enemies of the nation, I will exterminate the na- 
tion." He proclaims himself the friend of the enemies of the na- 
tion, and an enemy himself of the United States. He avows it 
his purpose to destroy it at the first opportunity to the extent of 
his vote. The rebel chiefs proclaim independence or extermina- 
tion the only alternatives. The gentleman from Ohio declares 
extermination or independence the only alternatives. The rebel 
chiefs prefer the recognition of their independence to their exterm- 
ination. The gentleman from Ohio avows himself for recogni- 
tion and against extermination ; and recognition of the Southern 
Confederacy means the dissolution of the United States. The 



400 EXPULSION OF MR. LONG, OF OHIO. 

Constitution proclaims the perpetuity of the Union ; and that 
Constitution recognizes no dissolution, no end of its existence. 
Sworn to maintain that Constitution, he now says : "In violation 
of a solemn oath, in spite of the duty I am sent here to discharge, 
rather than maintain it to the extent of exterminating its enemies, 
I will destroy it." 

- Now, that is the case stated in plain language. It has not been 
stated here before to-day. And the question which we are bound 
as gentlemen and as legislators to determine is whether a gentle- 
man, acknowledged to be respectable, believed to be sincere, en- 
tertaining and avowing purposes which do not differ from those 
of the chief of the rebel Confederacy, or of the men in armed ar- 
ray beyond the Potomac bent on ejecting us from this hall, is the 
fit companion of gentlemen here, a fit depositary of his constitu- 
ents' vote, a safe person to be intrusted here with the secrets of 
the United States, a worthy guardian of the existence of the re- 
public. Are we to be seriously told that the freedom of speech 
screens a traitor because he puts his treasonable purposes in 
words? Does the Constitution secure the right of our avowed 
enemies to vote in this hall? May a man impudently declare 
that his purpose here is so to vote as to promote the success of 
the rebellion, to embarrass and paralyze the government in its 
suppression, to secure its triumph and our overthrow, to bring the 
armed enemy to Washington, or arrest our army lest it exterm- 
inate that enemy ? Then why do not the Congress at Eichmond 
adjourn to Washington, push us from our stools, and by parlia- 
mentary tactics, under the Constitution, arrest the wheels of gov- 
ernment? You could not expel them. Sir, that picture is his- 
tory — recent history. In 1860 that side of the House swarmed 
with the avowed enemies of the republic. One after one, as their 
stars dropped from the firmament of the Union, they went out, 
some with, tears in their eyes over the miseries they were about 
to inflict ; some of them with exultation over the coming calam- 
ities ; some of them with contemptuous lectures to the members 
in the House ; some staid behind to do the traitor's business in 
the disguise of honest legislators in both houses as long as they 
dared. One disgraced the Senate for one long session after armed 
men were soaking their native soil with their blood, and now he 
is in the ranks of our enemies. 

Are we to be told that gentlemen, entertaining not these opin- 



EXPULSION OF ME. LONG, OF OHIO. 401 

ions, but these purposes, resolved to the extent of their power to 
paralyze the government, and only limited in what they can do • 
by what it may be safe to do, must be allowed not merely to be 
members of the House, but to rise and insolently fling in our faces 
the avowal of their enmity, and invoke the Constitution of the 
United States in order that they may stab it to the heart? Shall 
men rise here and be allowed to express, whether in one form of 
phraseology or another, as may best aid the public enemy, their 
desire for the triumph of the rebel cause, and that, being too ten- 
der-hearted to wish that the enemies of the United States may be 
exterminated, they prefer our ruin ? And is it to be said that 
that comes within the sacred shield of the freedom of public opin- 
ion, the right of debate, the- freedom of speech ? Why, sir, it is 
not opinion that we complain of; it is not liberty of speech that 
we wish to restrict. On the contrary, I thank the gentleman 
[Mr. Long] for his speech, for it revealed an enemy, and an avow- 
ed is a more respectable than a concealed foe. He is more frank 
than the gentleman from New York [Mr. Fernando Wood], who, 
with similar sentiments, conceals them. He is more manly than 
that gentleman from New York who on Saturday rose before the 
House with a paper in his hand, declaring it to be the identical 
sheet from which the gentleman from Ohio read — read it flaunt- 
ingly in the face of the House, and declared that he concurred in 
every word of it, and that if the House expelled the gentleman 
from Ohio it must expel him also ; but to-day, frightened by the 
explosion of the indignation of the House on the head of the gen- *t* 
tleman from Maryland, was careful to say that he did not at all 
agree with the opinions for which the gentleman from Ohio is 
called in question. Commend me, sir, to an open adversary. I 
can respect the one, I can not have so much respect for the other. 
It is not for the freedom of the avowal, it is the entertaining the 
purpose which he does avow ; it is not that he violated the order 
of the House, it is because he violates the law of the country by 
his purpose to destroy it, that the gentleman from Ohio is ar- 
raigned. We do not punish him for saying what he did, we 
punish him for meaning what he declared he does mean to do ; 
and that is what we are called upon to do by the highest consid- 
erations of public policy, the plainest dictates of patriotic duty. 

Oh ! but we are told that it touches the rights of his constitu- 
ents. Let his constituents have an opportunity to pass upon that 

Cc 



402 EXPULSION OF MR. LONG, OF OHIO. 

after this declaration of purpose But we must have mutual con- 
sideration for each other ! Why, certainly, sir. But how far ? 
Is there no end to patience ? Is there no avowal showing crim- 
inal intent which wisdom requires we should guard against be- 
forehand ? What do you suppose would be the fate of a man sit- 
ting in the Capitol at Richmond who should arise there and pro- 
pose to recognize the supremacy of the United States? Do you 
suppose that the freedom of debate which gentlemen have enjoyed 
on this floor would have been tolerated, even if desired by any 
body? Is it not certain that he would have been expelled if he 
lived long enough for the vote of expulsion to be taken? Sup- 
pose that in the French Assembly, when the life of France was at 
stake, as the life of this nation is now at stake, and when heroic 
men were struggling to maintain it, some one had arisen and pro- 
posed to call back the Bourbons, and place the reins of govern- 
ment in their hands — how long would ho have remained a mem- 
ber of that body ? Suppose that the day before the battle of Cul- 
lodcn, or the day after the battle of Preston Pans, some Jacobite 
had arisen in the Ilouse of Commons of England and declared 
himself of the opinion that the Pretender could not be expelled 
without the extermination of the Jacobites, and that therefore they 
should place him on the throne of England ! Do you think the 
traditional liberty of speech in England would have saved him 
from summary expulsion ? Do you think there is any law in 
England that could have stood between him and, not expulsion, 
but death ? Would not the act have been considered a crime, 
and the declaration of it in Parliament have been considered an 
aggravation of the crime, demanding his expulsion ? Would not 
the vote of that body have been instantaneous, and his execution 
swifter than that vote? 

Arc we to be told here that men are to rise in this hall, where 
the guns of the impending battle will echo in our ears, when we 
sit here only because we have one hundred and fifty thousand 
bayonets between us and the enemy ; when Washington is a great 
camp, the centre of thirty miles of fortifications stretching around 
us for our protection ; arc we to be told that here, within this cita- 
del of the nation, an enemy may beckon with his hand to the 
armed foe, assuring him of friends within the people's hall, at the 
very centre of power, and we can not expel him? 

Sir, let me say to this House that if it were a constitutional right 



EXPULSION OF Mil. LONG, OF OHIO. 40^ 

so to speak, in my judgment this is one of those cases which so far 
transcends the ordinary rules of law, one of those cases which 
carries us so near to the original right of self-defense, one of those 
cases which appeals so directly to the inalienable right of self-pro- 
tection, that without law and in spite of law the safety of the peo- 
ple requires his expulsion, and I would be one to do it. But, sir, 
I do not think the Constitution does confer the right so to speak. 
I think we arc within the limits of written law which the wisdom 
of our forefathers gave us with which to protect ourselves in ev- 
ery emergency, and this among others; and the only question is 
whether the patriotism of this House goes to the extent of the two 
thirds of its members required to rid it of the presence of an 
avowed public enemy. That, and that alone, is the question. 

But, Mr. Speaker, we are told that this is a question of opinion. 
If it be, it is one of those questions of opinion that nobody in this 
country has a right to be on more than one side of. On one side 
is patriotism, duty, and an oath. On the other is treason, crime, 
and perjury. Is it our duty, for the protection of a man in his 
opinion, to allow him to destroy the nation wc arc trying to de- 
fend? Where, in the record of nations, do you find an illustra- 
tion of that position? By what examples in history do you de- 
fend it ? By what precedent of statesmanship ? The great name 
of Chatham has often, in this debate, been invoked and desecrated 
to cover this avowal of preference for the enemy over the country. 
His example is wretchedly misunderstood. Doubtless his voice 
was lifted in warning tones against taxation without our consent, 
and still fiercer against war to enforce it. His example might be 
pleaded for moderation and respect for the rights of our Southern 
fellow-citizens ; but they have not been violated ; but never, nev- 
er to sanction a division of the republic. His example is the bit- 
terest reproach to those who claim its protection. After years of 
war unjustly begun and weakly waged, when exhausted England 
sank before the combined arms of America and France, and the 
Duke of Kichmond rose in the Ilouse of Lords to move for peace 
with America, the patriotic soul of Chatham was stirred within 
him at the thought of the humiliation and division of that em- 
pire whose limits he had expanded and whose name he had dec- 
orated ; and, frail and dying, his legs swathed in flannel, his crutch 
in his hand, he was borne to the House of Lords in the arms of 
his great son to lift his last voice in execration of the folly which 



404 EXPULSION OF MR. LONG, OF OHIO. 

bad brought England to such humiliation, and to enter his dying 
protest against the recognition of American independence, already 
secured in fact by the sword. LTis English heart had no fear of 
exterminating the enemies of England in the holy work of main- 
taining the integrity of her empire. Sir, I accept the example, 
and I commend it to the consideration of the patriotic gentlemen 
on the other side of the House. I beg them to read a little farther 
than they seem to have done the history of the English statesman. 
Freedom of opinion ! Surely, sir, opinion is the breath of our na- 
tion. It is the measure of every right, the guarantee of every 
privilege, the protection of every blessing. It is opinion which 
creates our rulers. It is opinion that nerves or palsies their arm. 
It is opinion which casts down the proud and elevates the hum- 
ble. Its fluctuations arc the rise and foil of parties ; its currents 
bear the nation on to prosperity or ruin. Its free play is the con- 
dition of its purity. It is like the ocean, whose tides rise and fall 
day by day at the fickle bidding of the moon ; yet it is the great 
scientific level from which every height is measured — the horizon 
to which astronomers refer the motion of the stars. But, like the 
ocean, it has depths whose eternal stillness is the condition of its 
stability. Those depths of opinion are not free, and it is they that 
are touched by the words which have so moved the LTouse. Men 
must not commit treason, and say its guilt is matter of opinion 
and its punishment a violation of its freedom. Men can not swear 
to maintain the integrity of the nation and avow their intention 
to destroy it, and cover that double crime by the freedom of 
speech. That is to break up the fountains of the great deep on 
which all government is borne, and to pour its flood in revolu- 
tionary ruin over the land. To punish that is not a violation of 
the freedom of opinion or its expression. It is to protect its nor- 
mal ebb and flow, its free and healthy fluctuations, that we desire 
to relieve it from the opprobrium of being confounded with the 
declaration of treasonable purposes here in the high and solemn 
assemblage of the nation. 

The free expression of opinion ! I am at a loss to know how 
the opinions of Abraham Lincoln, or Horace Greeley, or Wendell 
Phillips, or the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Schenck], or Mr. Chase, 
if truly quoted, and equally criminal with those now arraigned, 
can extenuate their guilt or shield their author from the indigna- 
tion of the House. Their guilt is not his innocence. If he imi- 



EXPULSION OF MR. LONG, OF OHIO. 495 

tated their guilt, let him follow their repentance. The time which 
they have devoted to atoning for error by patriotic services he 
has dedicated to indurating his error and accomplishing his unpa- 
triotic purposes. But I am not concerned to vindicate in them 
what I condemn in him. I execrate the avowal equally in every 
mouth ; and if their guilt is beyond my judgment, that of the gen- 
tleman from Ohio is not. I can well understand how such exam- 
ples may serve to screen the Democratic party, or to delude an 
ill-informed crowd, and teach them that treason is error of opinion 
and not a crime, but they can not be successfully urged here be- 
fore the gentlemen of the House of Eepresentatives to exculpate 
the gentleman from Ohio; nor even, sir, can it vindicate the 
Democratic party from the charge of more sympathy with the 
enemies of the country than with the country itself. The people 
will laugh at this attempt to impeach the loyalty of the friends of 
the administration. They will see in this zealous defense of the 
gentleman from Ohio only another proof of Democratic sympathy 
with his views and purposes, hitherto invariably manifested wher- 
ever they have been in power. Where have they had power that 
they have not exhibited their sympathy with the enemies of the 
republic ? I admit there are honorable exceptions. I admit there 
are cases of honest delusion. I suppose there are cases of uncon- 
scious sympathy. I can not doubt the prevalence of a criminal 
interest in the triumph of the rebels. I shall not discriminate one 
from the other. I speak of the party and its conduct. Where 
since the war broke out, from the time that James Buchanan dis- 
graced the American name by his message declaring, as gentle- 
men on that side of the House declare now, that this war is waged 
in violation of the Constitution, that there is no power to coerce a 
sovereign State, down to this day, is there a Democratic governor or 
Leg.slature which, until warned by the indignant voice of the peo- 
ple, has not tried to embarrass and discredit the government, and 
to give aid and encouragement to its enemies? The disavowals 
of individuals can not extenuate the conduct of Legislatures and 
governors. The prudence or cunning of caucuses or Congress- 
men, since the chastisement of 18G3, can not make the people for- 
get the conduct which provoked it. Will they ever forget the 
Legislature of Indiana and its votes on the resolutions for°armis- 
tice and peace, which swarmed before it; or the Legislature of 
Illinois and the bill to strip the governor of his just military an- 



406 EXPULSION OF MR. LONG, OF OHIO. 

thority ; and the resolutions for an armistice and a Convention at 
Louisville of Western and rebel States, to dictate terms to the 
United States, actually adopted, I think, by one House ; or the 
New Jersey Legislature, which sent Wall of Fort Lafayette to the 
United States Senate, and was ready to adopt peace resolutions 
but for an accidental adjournment which enabled the members to 
gather the whisperings of their indignant constituents? How 
have they expressed their sympathies on the side of the United 
States unless by attempting to array the State authorities against 
the United States, to excite the prejudices of the people against 
the necessary suspension of the habeas corpus, to represent the 
assertion of the supremacy of the United States courts and officers 
in the enforcement of United States laws as invasions of the rights 
of the States ? What Democrat in Pennsylvania did not vote for 
Woodward? What Democrat in New York did not vote for 
Horatio Seymour ? What Democrat in Connecticut did not vote 
for Seymour of Connecticut ? What Democrat in Ohio did not 
vote for Vallandigham ? It is vain to attempt to conceal it. The 
history of that party during the war proves the declaration made 
on this floor that there is no such thing as a Democratic party for 
the war : its elastic mantle covers equally those who, like the gen- 
tleman from New York [Mr. Kernan], have a love for the Union, 
and fail when he comes to vote on it, and those who, like the gen- 
tleman from Maryland [Mr. Harris], glory in the failure of the 
armies of the United States to conquer the States in rebellion. 

The gentleman from New York [Mr. Kernan] who last spoke, 
and whose earnest tones all must have felt, declared himself ready 
to do all in his power to suppress the insurrection, and yet he 
failed to vote for the Conscription Bill, the indispensable condition 
to the prosecution of the war. That is the type of the War Dem- 
ocrat ! Very earnest in vague generalities for the War, equally 
earnest in decrying the policy of the administration, but, having 
exhausted their earnestness on those topics, are so unable on any 
practical measure to tear themselves away from party association, 
so penetrated with valetudinarian views or perverse judgments on 
the Constitution of the United States, that their aid is more em- 
barrassing than their opposition. 

But, Mr. Speaker, if it be said that a time may come when the 
question of recognizing the Southern Confederacy will have to be 
answered, I admit it ; and it is answering the strongest and the 



EXPULSION OF MR. LONG, OF OHIO. 407 

extremest case that gentlemen on the other side can present. I 
admit it. "When a Democrat shall darken the White House and 
the land; when a Democratic majority here shall proclaim that 
freedom of speech secures impunity to treason, and declare recog- 
nition better than extermination of traitors ; when Vallandigham 
shall be Governor of Ohio, and Bright Governor of Indiana, and 
Woodward Governor of Pennsylvania, and Seymour Governor of 
Connecticut, and Wall Governor of New Jersey, and the gentle- 
man from New York city [Mr. Wood] sit in Seymour's seat, and 
thus, possessed of power over the great centre of the country, they 
shall do what they attempted in vain before in the midst of rebel 
triumphs — array the authorities of the States against those of 
the United States ; oppose the militia to the army of the United 
States; invoke the habeas corpus to discharge confined traitors; 
deny to the government the benefit of the laws of war, lest it ex- 
terminate its enemies ; when the Democrats, as in the fall of 1862, 
shall again, with more permanent success, persuade the people of 
the country that the war should not be waged till the integrity of 
the territory of the Union is restored, cost what it might ; that 
such a war violates the spirit of free institutions, which those who 
advocate it wish to overthrow ; that it should stop, for their bene- 
fit, somewhere this side of absolute triumph, lest there be no room 
for a compromise ; when gentlemen of that party in New York 
shall again, as in November, 1862, hold illegal and criminal nego- 
tiations with Lord Lyons, avow their purposes to him, the repre- 
sentative of a foreign and unfriendly power, and urge him to ar- 
range the time of proffering mediation with a view to their pos- 
session of power and their preparation of the minds of the people 
to receive suggestions from abroad ; when mediation shall appear, 
by the event, to be the first step toward foreign intervention, swift- 
ly and surely followed by foreign armed enemies upon our shores 
to join the domestic enemies ; when the war in the cars shall be- 
gin, which was menaced at the outbreak of the rebellion, and the 
friends of Seymour shall make the streets of New York run with 
blood on the eve of another Gettysburg less damaging to their 
hopes; when M'Clellan and Fitz John Porter shall have again 
brought the rebel armies within sight of Washington City, and 
the successor of James Buchanan shall withdraw our armies from 
the unconstitutional invasion of Virginia to the north of the Poto- 
mac ; when exultant rebels shall sweep over the fortifications, and 



408 EXPULSION OF MR. LONG, OF OHIO. 

their bomb-shells shall crash against the dome of the Capitol ; 
when thousands throughout Pennsylvania shall seek refuge on 
the shores of Lake Erie from the rebel invasion, cheered and wel- 
comed by the opponents of extermination ; when the people, ex- 
hausted by taxation, weary of sacrifices, drained of blood, betray- 
ed by their rulers, deluded by demagogues into believing that 
peace is the way to union and submission the path to victory, 
shall throw down their arms before the advancing foe ; when vast 
chasms across every State shall make apparent to every eye, when 
too late to remedy it, that division from the South is anarchy at 
the North, and that peace without union is the end of the repub- 
lic — then the independence of the South will be an accomplished 
fact, and gentlemen may, without treason to the dead republic, 
rise in this migratory House, wherever it may then be in Amer- 
ica, and declare themselves for recognizing their masters at the 
South rather than exterminating them ! Until that day, in the 
name of the American nation ; in the name of every house in the 
land where there is one dead for the holy cause ; in the name of 
those who stand before us in the ranks of battle ; in the name of 
the liberty our ancestors have confided to us, I devote to eternal 
execration the name of him who shall propose to destroy this 
blessed land rather than its enemies. 

But, until that time arrive, it is the judgment of the American 
people that there shall be no compromise ; that ruin to ourselves 
or ruin to the Southern rebels are the only alternatives. It is only 
by resolutions of this kind that nations can rise above great dan- 
gers and overcome them in crises like this. It was only by turn- 
ing France into a camp, resolved that Europe might exterminate, 
but should not subjugate her, that France is the leading empire 
of Europe to-da} 7- . It is by such a resolve that the American peo- 
ple, coercing a reluctant government to draw the sword and stake 
the national existence on the integrity of the republic, are now 
any thing but the fragments of a nation before the world, the scorn 
and hiss of every petty tyrant. It is because the people of the 
United States, rising to the height of the occasion, dedicated this 
generation to the sword, and pouring out the blood of their chil- 
dren as of no account, and avowing before high Heaven that there 
should be no end to this conflict but ruin absolute or absolute tri- 
umph, that we now are what we are ; that the banner of the re- 
public, still pointing onward, floats proudly in the face of the ene- 



EXPULSION OF MR. LONG, OF OHIO. 409 

ray ; that vast regions are reduced to obedience to the laws, and 
that a great host in armed array now presses with steady step 
into the dark regions of the rebellion. It is only by the earnest 
and abiding, resolution of the people that, whatever shall be our 
fate, it shall be grand as the American nation, worthy of that re- 
public which first trod the path of empire, and made no peace but 
under the banners of victory, that the American people will sur- 
vive in histor}^. And that will save us. We shall succeed and 
not fail. I have an abiding confidence in the firmness, the pa- 
tience, the endurance of the American people ; and, having vowed 
to stand in history on the great resolve to accept of nothing but 
victory or ruin, victory is ours. And if with such heroic resolve 
we fall, we fall with honor, and transmit the name of liberty com- 
mitted to our keeping untarnished, to go down to future genera- 
tions. The historian of our decline and fall, contemplating the 
ruins of the last great republic, and drawing from its fate lessons 
of wisdom on the waywardness of men, shall drop a tear as he re- 
cords with sorrow the vain heroism of that people who dedicated 
and sacrificed themselves to the cause of freedom, and by their 
example will keep alive her worship in the hearts of men till hap- 
pier generations shall learn to walk in her paths. Yes, sir, if we 
must fall, let our last hours be stained by no weakness ; if we 
must fall, let us stand amid the crash of the falling republic and 
be buried in its ruins, so that history may take note that men 
lived in the middle of the nineteenth century worthy of a better 
fate, but chastised by God for the sins of their forefathers. Let. 
the ruins of the republic remain to testify to the latest generations 
our greatness and our heroism. And let Liberty, crownless and 
childless, sit upon these ruins, crying aloud in a sad wail to the 
nations of the w T orld, "I nursed and brought up children, and 
they have rebelled against me." (Great applause on the floor 
and in the galleries.) 



THE ENROLLMENT BILL. 

On the 1st of July Mr. Davis moved to concur in an amendment to 
the Enrollment Bill, which provided-?— 1, that no exemption should be at- 
tainable by payment of commutation-money ; 2, that the enrolled should 
be divided into two classes, from eighteen to twenty-five years of age, and 
from twenty-live to forty ; 3, that during the rebellion 250,000 men 
should be drafted from the first class, organized and drilled as a corps de 
reserve, and to supply deficiencies ; 4, that all required beyond that in any 
one year should be from the second class ; 5, that volunteers, with three 
hundred dollars bounty, should first be called for ; G, that every drafted 
man having those dependent on him, and not having three hundred dol- ■ 
lars a year income, should be allowed not exceeding twenty dollars per 
month for such dependents; and 7, that a draft might be had in the re- 
bellious States, as occupied, and volunteers procured there should be 
credited to the State procuring them. 

Mr. Davis proceeded to explain his views on these points as follows : 

Mr. Speaker, — Illness and its consequences have deprived me 
of the opportunity of assisting the deliberations of the House on 
this topic till this time, when it is not to be expected that any 
thing I may say shall at all influence the result. But I beg that 
I may be allowed to have their attention for a few moments to 
explain the propositions which I have offered, and which embody, 
in the shape of a bill, what I think the exigencies of the time de- 
mand. 

I am not under any delusion respecting the fate of the propo- 
sition. / hyioto that the amendment is not likely to receive the vote of 
a majority of the House. I despair of seeing the House 'rise to 
the height of the occasion, and show that degree of energy which 
the crisis demands. I do not presume to put my judgment against 
theirs ; all I desire is, that I shall have an opportunity of spread- 
ing before the country briefly what I think the great cause of the 
nation demands at our hands, and leave it to the future and events 
to decide who is right. 

We want men, not money. We want men to bear arms. What- 



THE ENROLLMENT BILL. 41 1 

ever stands in the way of getting men is striking directly at the 
existence of the republic, and therefore not a subject for consid- 
eration touching its political expediency. To allow men to buy 
by money exemption from personal military service, is to place 
money in the hands of the government, and not men. To com- 
mute service for money is to throw upon that class of the com- 
munity which can not raise the requisite sum the whole burden 
of compulsory military service. No democratic government can 
defend any such provision. 

It is new in the history of military organization. No aristo- 
cratic or despotic country has ever ventured to attempt it, and 
those who undertake to defend it upon principle, reason upon 
ground I can not understand. It allows one man to pay his ob- 
ligations to the republic in money, and requires another to pay it 
in blood. 

Therefore, the first provision of my amendment prohibits any 
commutation for personal service. It leaves open the right, which 
is secure in every compulsory military organization in the world, 
to furnish a substitute, which gives the government, at least, the 
requisite ability to meet and repel the public enemy. 

The Senate bill is fatally defective, though it repeals the com- 
mutation clause, in limiting the draft to one year. That pushes 
a mob of raw recruits against veteran corps to encounter inevit- 
able defeat, and shed useless blood. 

The opposition to a vigorous draft is wholly incomprehensible. 
It is the republican, and the only republican mode of raising an 
army. The Eoman republic placed her youth liable to military 
service in the Campus Martius, and the consul selected at will 
whom he chose. 

The French republic saved the existence of the nation, and the 
principles of republican liberty, by the law of conscription. 

And it has been the law of the American republic from the ad- 
ministration of President Washington, and the law I propose 
merely adds vigor to that system. 

The next provision of my amendment relates to the classifica- 
tion of the military population. No civilized nation includes in 
one draft all the men from eighteen or twenty years of age to 
forty-five years of age. There is no inequality in that. The rule 
of all military powers is to make the army to consist of, and cause 
it to be drawn from the young men of the country. The men 



412 THE ENROLLMENT BILL. 

under twenty-five or twenty-six years of age, before they become 
involved in the responsibilities of life, before in a large proportion 
they are married, before families have accumulated around them, 
before they become entangled in the business occupations of life, 
before large masses of workmen and great capitals are dependent 
upon their personal attention and their capacity to manage busi- 
ness, every military nation makes that the first and preferred 
source from which to recruit its army. Older men, having passed 
that period of liability to active military service, form the na- 
tional guard, or a reserve for great emergencies. I therefore 
have provided, in the second section of the bill, that the military 
population of the United States shall be divided into two classes, 
the first to consist of the men between eighteen and twenty-five, 
and the second to consist of those between twenty -five and forty- 
live. 

The next thing we want is that there shall be a regular, con- 
stant levy of force to supply the deficiencies of our troops, the 
casualties of the service, the expiration of terms of enlistment, and 
to enable the government to advance with a steady, unvarying 
pressure upon the enemy, so that it shall not be hereafter, as it 
has been heretofore, that we shall send an army into the field, and 
wait till it is wasted by disease and by the lire of the enemy, and 
then rest on our arms till the enemy recruits his ranks while we 
are recruiting ours, and refreshed by repose, and strong in the 
fruits of their vigorous conscription, they stand with full ranks to 
dispute our advance. 

Therefore, the third section of my substitute requires that every 
year during the rebellion the President shall cause to be levied 
two hundred and fifty thousand men, to be armed, trained, and or- 
ganized provisionally, and sent to the front, or held as a reserve 
to be moved as the President may direct, according to the exi- 
gencies of the service. 

The fourth section of the substitute provides that, if more men 
are needed for the service in any year, the President shall cause 
the rest to be levied from the men over twenty-five and under 
forty-five, which subjects them in their regular turn to the respons- 
ibilities and dangers of war. 

Then, as there is an earnest feeling all over the country in favor 
of procuring them by volunteering rather than by draft, the sub- 
stitute farther provides that, prior to and concurrently with the 



THE ENROLLMENT BILL. 413 

draft, until it shall be filled, the President shall call for and accept 
volunteers to fill the requisition to the extent of the draft; and he 
is authorized to pay them $300 for an enlistment for three years, 
and proportionally for a less period, to be designated by the gov- 
ernment. 

That will enable the government to procure, as far as volun- 
teering and bounties can do so, the men it requires. It imposes 
no definite delay between the call of the volunteers and the en- 
forcement of the draft, for no man can regulate the advance of 
the enemy ; no man can determine the exigencies of war ; no 
man can say how long a time may elapse before this capital is in 
danger; before retreating forces may require men to be moved 
rapidly to their support ; and therefore I leave to the discretion 
of the President to call for volunteers as long before, or as shortly 
before the draft as prudence or the necessities of the case may 
dictate. The bill has this other provision, essential to the draft 
being intolerable to the poor men, that men who have parent or 
wife, child or sister, dependent on their labor for support, shall, 
when drafted, be allowed ten dollars a month for each such de- 
pendent, provided that the allowance shall not exceed twenty dol- 
lars in any one month on account of any one conscript ; and the 
sum is payable, not to the conscript, but to or for the dependent 
person for whose support it is a charitable provision. These de- 
serted persons must starve, or go to the poor-house, or be honor- 
ably supported by the nation which exacts the time and blood 
of their natural protector. 

And then the final provision is that it shall be the duty of the 
government — not merely giviiTg authority — but that it shall be 
the duty of the government to enforce the draft in every district 
in the rebel States occupied by the armies of the republic. A 
traitor in the midst of loyal men, with a musket on his shoulder, 
will make as good and as vigorous a soldier as any man. Na- 
poleon prostrated Europe at his feet with men conscripted from 
hostile nations, who would, if they could, have cut the throats of 
the men by whose side they fought. 

There is also another provision that any of the loyal States may 
send agents into the rebel States, and there procure volunteers, 
which shall be credited to the loyal State procuring them. 

I have also provided that persons residing in one State who 



414: THE ENROLLMENT BILL. 

shall enlist or volunteer in another State shall be credited by cal- 
culating the draft to the State in which they reside. 

Now, sir, in my judgment, this bill, as I have proposed to amend 
it, will give to the government the power to create an army, which, 
if there be only wisdom and energy at the White House, will be 
able to stamp out the rebellion in another campaign. This cam- 
paign can not accomplish it; we have not men enough in the 
field, nor on the decisive points of the field, and we can not get 
enough, in time to accomplish that purpose during this campaign. 
What I desire is to adopt a system that shall keep our armies 
full continually ; that will enable them to pour a constant stream 
of fire upon the enemies of the republic till the last armed rebel 
shall be driven into the Gulf of Mexico. 

Mr. Mallory. Did I understand the gentleman from Mary- 
land to say that his bill provides for the enlistment of soldiers in 
the rebel States by the loj^al States, to be credited to the States 
enlisting them ? 

Mr. Davis, of Maryland. Yes, sir, it allows them to go into the 
rebel States and enlist. I have put that provision in in deference 
to the feeling which exists on this side of the House. 

It is not a provision which meets my approval entirely ; but I 
do not regard it as one of vital importance, and therefore, for the 
purpose of meeting the wishes of gentlemen on this side of the 
House, I have inserted it as one of the provisions of the bill. 

The amendment proposed by Mr. Davis was rejected. 



THE PRESIDENT'S SUPPRESSION OF THE 
BILL FOR RECONSTRUCTION IN THE RE- 
BELLIOUS STATES.— 18G4. 

On the 8th of June, 18G4, the National Union Convention met at Bal- 
timore, and unanimously nominated Abraham Lincoln for re-election to 
the presidency, and Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee, with almost the same 
unanimity, for election to the vice-presidency of the United States. Un- 
doubtedly those nominations, made without difficulty, and almost without 
opposition, were most acceptable to,* and were received by the American 
people as peculiarly significant of their firm resolve to prosecute the war 
to final triumph, to sustain the administration, to approve Mr. Lincoln's 
course, and to show their appreciation of the courage, constancy, and pa- 
triotism shown by Mr. Johnson under circumstances of peculiar difficulty. 

Mr. Davis had opposed the renomination of Mr. Lincoln ; he preferred 
Mr. Chase or Mr. Wade ; but it was early seen in the Convention upon 
Avhat the feeling of the country was resolved. 

After these nominations had been made, and after the rebel raid around 
Baltimore in July, and when it was known that the bill for the recon- 
struction of the rebel States Avould not be approved by the President, it 
began to be asserted by many of the dissatisfied in the Republican party 
that his course in that respect, if General M'Clellan should be the nom- 
inee of the opposition party at Chicago, would lose the States of New 
York and Pennsylvania, while it became doubtful whether he could 
bring out the party strength even in New England. Under these fears, 
if real, or, at any rate, in hopes of inducing or compelling the withdrawal 
of Mr. Lincoln, certain members of the Republican party invited a con- 
ference of the dissatisfied at New York at the end of July. Mr. Davis 
took part in it, and was warmly in favor of such a change of plan and 
candidate. It was resolved to send a committee, or delegation, to Chi- 
cago to confer with the opposition Convention to meet there, in hopes 
of inducing the choice of such a candidate and declaration of principles 

* Even Massachusetts gave her vote, on the first ballot, for Andrew Johnson, who 

had been a Democratic senator from Tennessee ; and yet it was afterward declared 

by some principal men from that State that these nominations could not be car- 

. ried, even in Massachusetts, where they feigned to believe that General M'Clellan, 

whose platform declared the war a failure, would gain the day. 



416 THE PRESIDENT'S SUPPRESSION OF THE BILL 

— such a party platform in regard to the conduct of the war as would, 
with the nomination of some popular leader in the war, insure the defeat 
of Mr. Lincoln. This proceeding failed, through the resolution of the 
Democrats to submit to the nomination of General M'Clellan, in hopes 
that his personal popularity would outweigh the repugnance to their 
platform. This declared the war a failure, and that temporary submis- 
sion, compromise, and peace were the only means to reunite the country. 

The conference of the dissatisfied Republicans had adjourned to reas- 
semble in New York on the 30th of August, then to publish an address 
to the people. But, when that day arrived, there were but two or three 
who met or wished to proceed. 

Upon these facts alone can be explained the determination to pub- 
lish, on the 8th of August, during the canvass and after the nomination, 
and while it was uncertain at least if the change could be made, to aid 
the plan just mentioned, the paper known as the "Wade-Davis Mani- 
festo," being an address to the people, signed by Messrs. Wade and Davis 
(and written by the latter), as chairmen respectively of the Senate and 
House committees on the reconstruction of the governments in the States 
lately in rebellion. 

The President had suppressed the bill for the reconstruction of those 
States, which was finally passed within a few hours of the final adjourn- 
ment of Congress, and had afterward issued a proclamation on the 18th 
of July, in which he declared his intentions in respect to those States, 
and his l-casons for not signing the bill. 

Thereupon the following paper was published in some of the journals, 
while the proceedings in relation to the change or defeat of the candi- 
dates of the Republican party were going on at New York. 

TO THE SUPPORTERS OF THE GOVERNMENT. 

We have read without surprise, but not without indignation, 
the proclamation of the President of the 18th of July, 1864. The 
supporters of the administration are responsible to the country 
for its conduct, and it is their right and duty to check the en- 
croachments of the executive on the authority of Congress, and 
to require it to confine itself to its proper sphere. It is impossi- 
ble to pass in silence this proclamation without neglecting that 
duty, and having taken as much responsibility as many others in 
supporting the administration, we are not disposed to fail in the 
other duty of supporting the rights of Congress. 

The President did not sign the bill to "guarantee to certain 
States, whose governments have been usurped, a republican form 
of government," passed by the supporters of his administration, 



FOR RECONSTRUCTION IN THE REBELLIOUS STATES. 417 

in both houses of Congress, after mature deliberation. The bill 
did not therefore become a law, and it is therefore nothing. The 
proclamation is neither an approval nor a veto of the bill ; it is 
therefore a document unknown to the laws and Constitution of the 
Unit 3d States. So far as it contains an apology for not signing 
the bill, it is a political manifesto against the friends of the gov- 
ernment. So far as it proposes to execute the bill, which is not a 
law, it is a grave executive usurpation. It is fitting that the facts 
necessary to enable the friends of the administration to appreciate 
the. apology and the usurpation be spread before them. 
The proclamation says : 

" And whereas the said bill was presented to the President of the United States 
for 1) is approval less than one hour before the sine die adjournment of said session, 
and was not signed by him — " 

If this be accurate, still this bill was presented with other bills 
that were signed. Within that hour, the time for the sine die ad- 
journment was three times postponed by the votes of both houses, 
and the least intimation of a desire for more time by the Presi- 
dent to consider this bill would have secured a farther postpone- 
ment. Yet the committee, sent to ascertain if the President had 
any farther communication for the House of Eepresentatives, re- 
ported that he had none ; and the friends of the bill, who had 
anxiously waited upon him to ascertain its fate, had already been 
informed that the President had resolved not to sign it. The 
time of presentation, therefore, had nothing to do with his failure 
to approve it. 

The bill had been discussed and considered for more than a 
month in the House of Eepresentatives, which passed it on the 
4th of May. It was reported to the Senate on the 27th of May, 
without material amendment, and it passed the Senate absolute!}' 
as it came from the House on the 2d of July. Ignorance of its 
contents is out of the question. Indeed, at the President's re- 
quest, a draft of a bill substantially the same in all material 
points, and identical in the points objected to by the proclama- 
tion, had been laid before him for his consideration in the winter 
of 1862-3. There is, therefore, no reason to suppose the provi- 
sions of the bill took the President by surprise. On the contrary, 
we have reason to believe them to have been so well known that 
this method of preventing the bill from becoming a law, without 
the constitutional responsibility of a veto, had been resolved on 

Dd 



418 THE PRESIDENT'S SUPPRESSION OF THE BILL 

long before the bill passed the Senate. "We are informed bj a 
gentleman entitled to entire confidence, that before the 22d of 
June, in New Orleans, it was stated by a member of General 
Banks's staff, in the presence of other gentlemen in official posi- 
tion, that Senator Doolittle had written a letter to the Department 
that the House " Eeconstruction Bill" would be staved off in the 
"Senate to a period too Late in the session to require the President 
to veto in order to defeat it ; and that Mr. Lincoln would retain 
the bill, if necessary, and thereby defeat it. The experience of 
Senator Wade in his various efforts to get the bill considered in 
the Senate was quite in accordance with that plan, and the fate 
of the bill was accurately predicted by letters received from New 
Orleans before it had passed the Senate. 

Had the proclamation stopped there, it would have been only 
one other defeat of the will of the people by an executive per- 
version of the Constitution. But it goes farther. The President 
says: 

"And whereas the said bill contains, among other things, a plan for restoring 
the States in rebellion to their proper practical relations in the Union, which plan 
expresses the sense of Congress upon that subject, and which plan it is now thought 
fit to lay before the people for their consideration — " 

By what authority of the Constitution? In what forms? The 
result to be declared by whom ? With what effect when ascer- 
tained ? Is it to be a law by the approval of the people, without 
the approval of Congress, at the will of the President? Will the 
President, on his opinion of the popular approval, execute it as 
law? Or is this merely a device to avoid the serious responsi- 
bility of defeating a law on which so many loyal hearts reposed 
for security ? But the reasons now assigned for not approving 
the bill are full of ominous significance. The President proceeds: 

"Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do pro- 
claim, declare, and make known that, while I am (as I was in December last, when 
by proclamation I propounded a plan for restoration) unprepared, by a formal ap- 
proval of this bill, to be inflexibly committed to any single plan of restoration — " 

That is to say, the President is resolved that the people shall 
not, by law, take any securities from the rebel States against a re- 
newal of the rebellion, before restoring their power to govern us. 
His wisdom and prudence are to be our sufficient guarantees. 
He farther says: 

"And while I am also unprepared to declare that the free State Constitutions 



FOR RECONSTRUCTION IN THE REBELLIOUS STATES. 419 

and governments already adopted and installed in Arkansas and Louisiana shall be 
set aside and held for naught, thereby repelling and discouraging the loyal citizens 
who have set up the same as to farther effort — " 

That is to say, the President persists in recognizing those shad- 
ows of governments in Arkansas and Louisiana which Congress 
formally declared should not be recognized ; whose representa- 
tives and senators were repelled by formal votes of both houses 
of Congress, and which, it was formally declared, should have no 
electoral vote for President and Vice-President. They are mere 
creatures of his will. They can not live a day without his sup- 
port. They are mere oligarchies imposed on the people by mili- 
tary orders, under the forms of election, at which generals, pro- 
vost-marshals, soldiers, and camp followers were the chief actors, 
assisted by a handful of resident citizens, and urged on to prema- 
ture action by private letters from the President. In neither 
Louisiana nor Arkansas, before Banks's defeat, did the United 
States control half the territory or half the population. In Lou- 
isiana, General Banks's proclamation candidly declared, "The fun- 
damental law of the State is martial law." On that foundation 
of freedom he erected what the President calls " the free Consti- 
tution and government of Louisiana." But of this State, whose 
fundamental law was martial law, only sixteen parishes out of 
forty-eight parishes were held by the United States ; and in five 
of our sixteen parishes we held only our camps. The eleven 
parishes we substantially held had 233,185 inhabitants; the resi- 
due of the State, not held by us, 575,617. At the farce called an 
election, the officers of General Banks returned that 11,346 bal- 
lots were cast, but whether any, or by whom, the people of the 
United States have no legal assurance. But it is probable that 
4000 were cast by soldiers, or employes of the United States, 
military or municipal ; but none, according to any law, State or 
national, and so 7000 ballots represent the State of Louisiana. 
Such is the free Constitution and government of Louisiana, and 
like it is that of Arkansas. Nothing but the failure of a military 
expedition deprived us of a like one in the swamps of Florida ; 
and, before the presidential election, like ones may be organized 
in every rebel State where the United States have a camp. 

The President, by preventing this bill from becoming a law, 
holds the electoral votes of the rebel States at the dictation of hi? 
personal ambition. If these votes turn the balance in his favor, 



420 THE PRESIDENT'S SUPPRESSION OF THE BILL 

is it to be supposed that his competitor, defeated by such means, 
will acquiesce? If the rebel majority assert their supremacy in 
those States, and send votes which elect an enemy of the govern- 
ment, will we not repel his claims? And is not that civil war 
for the presidency inaugurated by the voice of rebel States? Se- 
riously impressed with these dangers, Congress, " the proper con- 
stitutional authority," formally declared that there are no govern- 
ments in the rebel States, and provided for their erection at a 
proper time. Both the Senate and the* House of Representatives 
rejected the senators and representatives chosen under the au- 
thority of what the President calls the free Constitution and gov- 
ernment of Arkansas. The President's proclamation " holds for 
naught" this judgment, and discards the authority of the Supreme 
Court, and strides headlong toward the anarchy his proclamation 
of the 8th of December inaugurated. If electors for President be 
allowed to be chosen in either of those States, a sinister light will 
be cast on the motives which induced the President to " hold for 
naught" the will of Congress rather than his government in Lou- 
isiana and Arkansas. That judgment of Congress which the 
President defies was the exercise of an authority exclusively in- 
vested in Congress by the Constitution to determine what is the 
established government in a State, and in its own nature, and by 
the highest judicial authority, binding on all other departments 
of the government. 

The Supreme Court has formally declared that, under the 
fourth section of the fourth article of the Constitution requiring 
the United States to guarantee to every State a republican form 
of government, "it rests with Congress to decide what govern- 
ment is the established one in a State ;" and " when senators and 
representatives of a State are admitted into the councils of the 
Union, the authority of the government under which they are ap- 
pointed, as well as its republican character, is recognized by the 
proper constitutional authority, and its decision is binding on 
every other department of the government, and could not be 
questioned in a judicial tribunal. It is true that the contest in 
this case did not last long enough to bring the matter to this 
issue; and as no senators or representatives were elected under 
the authority of the government of which Mr. Dorr was the head, 
Congress was not called upon to decide the controversy. Yet 
the right to decide is placed there." Even the President's procla- 



FOR RECONSTRUCTION IN THE REBELLIOUS STATES. 421 

mation of the 8th of December formally declares that " whether 
members sent to Congress from any State shall be admitted to 
seats constitutionally rests exclusively with the respective houses, 
and not to any extent with the executive." And that is not the 
less true, because wholly inconsistent with the President's assump- 
tion, in that proclamation, of a right to institute and recognize 
State governments in the rebel States, nor because the President 
is unable to perceive that his recognition is a nullity if it be not 
conclusive upon Congress. 

Under the Constitution, the right to senators and representa- 
tives is inseparable from a State government. If there be a State 
government, the right is absolute. If there be no State govern- 
ment, there can be no senators or representatives chosen. The 
two houses of Congress are expressly declared to be the sole 
judges of their own members. When, therefore, senators and 
representatives are admitted, the State government under whose 
authority they were chosen is conclusively established; when they 
are rejected, its existence is as conclusively rejected and denied. 
And to this judgment the President is bound to submit. 

The President proceeds to express his unwillingness " to de- 
clare a constitutional competency in Congress to abolish slavery 
in States" as another reason for not signing the bill. But the 
bill nowhere proposes to abolish slavery in States. The bill did 
provide that all slaves in the rebel States should be manumitted. 
But as the President had already signed three bills manumitting 
several classes of slaves in States, it is not conceived possible that 
he entertained any scruples touching that provision of the bill 
respecting which he is silent. He has already himself assumed a 
right, by proclamation, to free much the larger number of slaves 
in the rebel States, under the authority given him by Congress 
to use military power to suppress the rebellion ; and it is quite 
inconceivable that the President should think Congress could vest 
in him a discretion which it could itself exercise. 

It is the more unintelligible from the fact that, except in respect 
to a small part of Virginia and Louisiana, the bill covered only 
what the proclamation covered — added a congressional title and 
judicial remedies by law; to the disputed title under the procla- 
mation, and perfected the work the President professed to be so 
anxious to accomplish. Slavery as an institution can be abolish- 
ed only by a change of the Constitution of the United States or 



422 TIIE PRESIDENT'S SUITRESSION OF THE BILL 

of the law of the State, and this is the principle of the bill. It 
required the new Constitution of the State to provide for that 
prohibition ; and the President, in the face of his own proclama- 
tion, does not venture to object to insisting on that condition. 
Nor will the country tolerate its abandonment ; yet he defeated 
the only provision imposing it. But when he describes himself, 
in spite of this great blow at emancipation, as " sincerely hoping 
and expecting that a constitutional amendment abolishing slav- 
ery throughout the nation may be adopted," we curiously inquire 
on what his expectation rests, after the vote of the House of Eep- 
resentatives at the recent session, and in the face of the political 
complexion of more than enough of the States to prevent the 
possibility of its adoption within any reasonable time, and why 
he did not indulge his sincere hopes with so large an installment 
of the blessing as his approval of the bill would have secured ? 

After this assignment of his reasons for preventing the bill 
from becoming a law, the President proceeds to declare his pur- 
pose to execute it as a law by his plenary dictatorial power. lie 
says : 

"Nevertheless, I am fully satisfied with the system for restoration contained in 
the bill as the very proper plan for the loyal people of any State choosing to adopt 
it ; and that I am, arid at all times shall be prepared to give the executive aid and 
assistance to any such people as soon as the military resistance to the United States 
shall have been suppressed in any such State, and the people thereof shall have 
sufficiently returned to their obedience to the Constitution and laws of the United 
States, in which cases military governors will be appointed, with the directions to 
proceed according to the bill." 

A more studied outrage on the legislative authority of the 
people has never been perpetrated. Congress passed a bill, the 
President refused to approve it ; and then, by proclamation, puts 
as much of it in force as he sees fit, and proposes to execute those 
parts by officers unknown to the laws of the United States, and 
not subject to the confirmation of the Senate. The bill directed 
the appointment of jwovismial governors by and with the advice 
and consent of the Senate. The President, after defeating the law, 
proposes to appoint without law, and without the advice and con- 
sent of the Senate, military governors of the rebel States. Lie 
has already exercised this dictatorial usurpation in Louisiana, and 
he defeated the bill to prevent its limitation. Henceforth we 
must regard the following precedent as the presidential law of 
the rebel States. 



FOR RECONSTRUCTION IN THE REBELLIOUS STATES. 423 

"Executive Mansion, Washington, March 15, 18G4. 
" His Excellency Michael llahn, Governor of Louisiana: 

"Until farther orders, you are hereby invested with the powers exercised hitherto 
by the Military Governor of Louisiana. 

"Yours, Abraham Lincoln." 

This Michael Ilahn is no officer of the United States. The 
President, without law, without the advice and consent of the 
Senate, by a private note not even countersigned by the Secre- 
tary of State, makes him dictator of Louisiana. The bill pro- 
vided for the civil administration of the laws of the State till it 
should be in a fit temper to govern itself, repealing all laws recog- 
nizing slavery, and making all men equal before the law. These 
beneficent provisions the President has annulled. People will 
die, and marry, and transfer property, and buy and sell, and to 
these acts of civil life courts and officers of the law are necessary. 
Congress legislated for these necessary things, and the President 
deprives them of the protection of the law. The President's pur- 
pose to instruct his military governors to " proceed according to 
the bill" — a make-shift to calm the disappointment its defeat has 
occasioned — is not merely a grave usurpation, but a transparent 
delusion. He can not " proceed according to the bill" after pre- 
venting it from becoming a law. Whatever is done will be at 
his will and pleasure, by persons responsible to no law, and more 
interested to secure the interests and execute the will of the Presi- 
dent than of the people, and the will of Congress is to be " held 
for naught," unless " the loyal people of the rebel States choose 
to adopt it." If they should graciously prefer the stringent bill 
to the easy proclamation, still the registration will be made under 
no legal sanction ; it will give no assurance that a majority of the 
people of the States have taken the oath ; if administered, it will 
be without legal authority, and void ; no indictment will lie for 
false swearing at the election, or for admitting bad, or for reject- 
ing good votes. It will be the farce of Louisiana and Arkansas 
acted over again, under the forms of this bill, but not by authority 
of law. 

But when we come to the guarantees of future peace which 
Congress meant to exact, the forms as well as the substance of the 
bill must yield to the President's will that none should be im- 
posed. It was the solemn resolve of Congress to protect the loyal 
men of the nation against three great dangers : (1) the return to 



424 THE PRESIDENT'S SUPPRESSION OF THE BILL 

power of the guilty leaders of the rebellion ; (2) the continuance 
of slavery; and (3) the burden of the rebel debt. Congress re- 
quired assent to those provisions of the Convention of the State, 
and, if refused, it was to be dissolved. The President " holds for 
naught" that resolve of Congress, because he is unwilling "to be 
inflexibly committed to any one plan of restoration ;" and the 
people of the United States are not to be allowed to protect them- 
selves unless their enemies agree to it. The order to proceed ac- 
cording to the bill is therefore merely at the will of the rebel 
States, and they have the option to reject it and accept the proc- 
lamation of the 8th of December, and demand the President's rec- 
ognition. Mark the contrast! The bill requires a majority, the 
proclamation is satisfied with one tenth; the bill requires one 
oath, the proclamation another; the bill ascertains votes by regis- 
tering, the proclamation by guess; the bill exacts adherence to 
existing territorial limits, the proclamation admits of others; the 
bill governs the rebel States hj law, equalizing all before it, the 
proclamation commits them to the lawless discretion of military 
governors and provost - marshals ; the bill forbids electors for 
President, the proclamation and defeat of the bill threaten us 
with civil war for the admission or exclusion of such votes ; the 
bill exacted exclusion of dangerous enemies from power, and the 
relief of the nation from the rebel debt, and the prohibition of 
slavery forever, so that the suppression of the rebellion will double 
our resources to bear or pay the national debt, free the masses 
from the old domination of the rebel leaders, and eradicate the 
cause of the war ; the proclamation secures neither of these guar- 
antees. 

It is silent respecting the rebel debt and the political exclusion 
of rebel leaders, leaving slavery exactly where it was by law at 
the outbreak of the rebellion, and adds no guarantees even of the 
freedom of the slaves the President undertook to manumit. It is 
summed up in an illegal oath, without a sanction, and therefore 
void. The oath is to support all proclamations of the President 
during the rebellion having reference to slaves. Any govern- 
ment is to be accepted at the hands of one tenth of the people 
not contravening that oath. Now that oath neither secures the 
abolition of slavery, nor adds any security to the freedom of the 
slaves whom the President declared free. It does not secure the 
abolition of slavery, for the proclamation of freedom merely pro- 



FOR RECONSTRUCTION IN THE REBELLIOUS STATES. 425 

fessed to free certain slaves, while it recognized the institution. 
Every Constitution of the rebel States at^the outbreak of the re- 
bellion may be adopted, without the change of a letter, for none 
of them contravene that proclamation, none of them establish 
slavery. 

It adds no security to the freedom of the slaves, for their title is 
the proclamation of freedom. If it be unconstitutional, an oath 
to support it is void. Whether constitutional or not, the oath is 
without authority of law, and therefore void. If it be valid, and 
observed, it exacts no enactment by the State, either in law or 
Constitution, to add a State guarantee to the proclamation title ;• 
and the right of a slave to freedom is an open question before the 
State courts on the relative authority of the State law and the 
proclamation. If the oath binds the one tenth who take it, it is 
not exacted of the other nine tenths who succeed to the control 
of the State government, so that it is annulled instantly by the 
act of recognition. What the State courts would say of the proc- 
lamation who can doubt? But the master would not go into 
court, he would seize his slave. What the Supreme Court would 
say who can tell ? When and how is the question to get there ? 
No habeas corpus lies for him in a United States court ; and the 
President defeated with this bill its extension of that writ to this 
case. 

Such are the fruits of this rash and fatal act of the President, a 
blow at the friends of his administration, at the rights of humani- 
ty, and at the principles of republican government. 

The President has greatly presumed on the forbearance which 
the supporters of his administration have so long practiced, in 
view of the arduous conflict in which we are engaged, and the 
reckless ferocity of our political opponents. 

But he must understand that our support is of a cause, and not 
of a man ; that the authority of Congress is paramount, and must 
be respected ; that the whole body of the Union men of Congress 
will not submit to be impeached by him of rash and unconstitu- 
tional legislation ; and that, if he wishes our support, he must con- 
fine himself to his executive duties — to obey and execute — not to 
make the laws ; to suppress by arms armed rebellion, and leave 
political reorganization to the Congress. 

If the supporters of the government fail to insist on this, they 
become responsible for the usurpations which they fail to rebuke, 



426 THE PRESIDENT'S SUPPRESSION OF THE BILL, ETC. 

and are justly liable to the indignation of the people whose rights 
and security committed to their keeping they sacrifice. 

Let them consider the remedy for these usurpations, and, hav- 
ing found, fearlessly execute it. , 

B. F. Wade, Chairman of Senate Committee. 

H. Winter Davis, 
Chairman of Committee of House of Eepresentatives 
on the Rebellious States. 



VICTORY THE CONDITION OF SUCCESS. 

On the 14th of October, 18G4, the new Constitution of Maryland, sub- 
mitted by the State Convention in June, abolishing slavery in the State, 
was approved and adopted by the people. Mr. Davis thus lived to see 
accomplished the work of emancipation, in which he had taken great in- 
terest, and in the advocacy of which he had also had an active part. 

But an opposition to him in the ranks of the Union party in his own 
district, which had been confined at first to a few, had been increased by 
the policy he had advocated and by his votes on some occasions in Con- 
gress, and had not been diminished by the tone he had sometimes used 
toward such opponents. His opposition to the renomination of Mr. Lin- 
coln, and to certain measures of his administration, had had the same 
effect in this district, and it had lately been increased among others by 
the publication of the "Wade-Davis Manifesto." It was asserted by 
some of the opponents of Mr. Davis that, while he thus did not com- 
pletely support the administration, and furnished (by the Manifesto) ar- 
guments against it during the canvass, he was in some things more ex- 
treme than the Republican party; that his votes in Congress actually 
drove away Southern trade from Baltimore, and that his course and pro- 
posed action now tended to exasperate instead of winning back the States 
now (then) in rebellion. 

Besides these allegations, a good deal of the opposition to Mr. Davis 
must be traced to the personal animosities and bitterness of feeling which 
in Baltimore of late years had been the invariable consequence of a dif- 
ference, not merely of party and political views, but of opinions also, as 
to the line of party conduct even among its own adherents. It was 
farther asserted by some that Mr. Davis was then, and would shortly de- 
clare himself, in favor of "negro suffrage," whenever he thought the ne- 
cessities of the political situation demanded its adoption. 

Upon all these grounds and assertions, this opposition to him, which 
had proved 'itself impoi-tant two years before, when he was last nomina- 
ted for Congress, now showed signs of carrying with it the control of the 
Union party. This was confirmed in September by the defeat, for the 



428 VICTORY THE CONDITION OF SUCCESS. 

State Nominating Convention, of those who opposed the nomination of 
Governor Swann, and it was finally settled in October by the result of a 
municipal election in Baltimore. At the ward meetings in the district, 
held immediately afterward, for delegates to a Convention to nominate a 
representative to the Thirty-ninth Congress (1865-'G7), the opponents 
of Mr. Davis carried almost every ward. The nomination was given 
unanimously to Colonel Charles E. Phelps, of Baltimore, who had served 
with gallantry during the war, had been wounded in action, and who 
was returned in November Avithout opposition to the Thirty-ninth Con- 
gress. 

It is not necessary to discuss here Avhether any different course, if it 
had been pursued by Mr. Davis, Avould have maintained the unity of the 
party strength, continued its support of him, and prevented those defec- 
tions which had on previous occasions refused to him the united party 
vote. He always boldly avOAved his opinions, and assumed their full 
responsibility. He made no compromises Avith what he thought a vacil- 
lating policy, and those even Avho condemned his course could not refuse 
to admit the sincerity and the fearlessness of his action. He declined, 
on more than one occasion, to make concessions, or to explain aAvay any 
vote or act of his, even when he Avas assured that his defeat Avould be 
the penalty of his refusal ; for in matters of this kind he was as much 
unaccustomed to yield to the persuasions of friends, or to considerations 
of " policy," as he was to the threats and imprecations of enemies. In- 
deed, he took no account of opposition, except to work the more reso- 
lutely ; and he frequently disregarded the advice of those even to Avhom 
he was attached, unless it accorded Avith what he thought right, and so, 
ahvays and every Avhere, expedient. He followed the convictions and 
conclusions of his OAvn judgment alone. 

In consequence of this defeat, and the feelings engendered by it, Mr. 
Davis was not invited by the State Central Committee of the Union 
party in Maryland to take part in the canvass in this State. 

He was invited, hoAvever, elsewhere, and among these invitations he 
accepted one to Philadelphia, where he spoke on the 25 th of October, in 
National Hall, to a very large meeting under the auspices of the Union 
League, as folloAvs : 

Fellow-citizens of the United States, — The canvass in 
which the American people are now engaged is very much the 
most momentous that the history of the world or of free govern- 
ment has presented. If it succeed, as in my judgment it will suc- 
ceed, in placing in power the men who have conducted the gov- 
ernment through this awful crisis till safety begins to be visible, 



VICTORY THE CONDITION OF SUCCESS. 429 

a result will have been accomplished which will forever place the 
capacity of the people of America for self-government beyond 
cavil — beyond the reach of question ; for they are called to vote 
for the election of a man who has presided over the government 
in circumstances altogether unprecedented, during a time when 
vast sacrifices have been exacted, and vast sacrifices have cheer- 
fully been made by the mass of the American people ; when enor- 
mous taxes have been imposed; when enormous armies have been 
raised ; when great results were expected, and great results have 
not always been achieved ; when disaster has perched upon the 
national banner as often as victory, and when the great prepon- 
derance of our resources in men and money, while gradually and 
steadily eating toward the heart of the rebellion, have not reached 
it with that promptness, have not crushed it with that decisive- 
ness, that our hopes led us to expect when the war broke out. 
Under these circumstances, judged by the history of the world, 
discontent, dissension, the lack of spirit and of energy, divisions at 
home, dictating tones from abroad, popular submission, popular 
bewilderment, were what we were entitled to expect — nay, what 
we were bound to expect. Instead of that, what do we behold ? 
The great mass of the American people having, as it were, been 
surprised into the renomination of the present candidate — then 
for a moment pausing, as if frightened at what they had done — 
then listening to the first echo from Chicago, and forgetting every 
doubt, throwing aside every hesitation, subjecting every criticism 
to the dictates of the highest reason and the highest statesman- 
ship, as one man turned to the candidate whom before they had 
doubted, with a resolution that they must make an election — not 
between two individuals — not between the personal qualities of 
Abraham Lincoln and George B. M'Clellan, not between the pub- 
lic services of the one or the other, but an election between the 
overthrow and the salvation of the republic. (Loud applause.) 
They exhibited, they are now exhibiting every where in this land, 
that great and highest mark of sublime statesmanship, the capacity 
of judging between things neither of which may be acceptable, 
but one of which is necessary — the great quality of a great states- 
man to subordinate personal dislikes, differences of opinion, upon 
subordinate points; great failures for whom none but those in 
power can be held responsible — to subordinate the natural and 
inevitable discontent which such events as those bring about in a 



430 VICTORY THE CONDITIO^ OF SUCCESS. 

people, and to raise the great practical question, "What do we 
men of America wish to accomplish ?" and having determined 
what they wish to accomplish, to ask the other question, " Which 
of the two men before the people for their votes is on our side?" 
not which is the abler, not which is the most skillful administra- 
tor, not which is the better warrior, not even which is the more 
patriotic ; but, conceding them to be equal on these points, or con- 
ceding our opponent to be superior to our candidate on any or all 
of these points, the American people have solemnly asked them- 
selves " which of those two men is on our side?" and having de- 
termined that one plain, simple question of fact, they have determ- 
ined, if need be, that the principle of our politics shall be, and that 
the safety of the nation requires that it shall be, that even the 
worst man on our side is better than the best man on their side. 
(Applause.) And that is the reason, gentlemen, that I, and thou- 
sands like me in America, support Abraham Lincoln for the pres- 
idency : not because we think his acts are all wise or all defensi- 
ble — not because we regard him as the ablest among the men who 
stand by the republic in the hour of its need — still less for that 
most dangerous reason assigned by the Secretary of State, that 
this great contest in which the people are engaged is a mere con- 
test for the presidency, and that it would be yielding the point in 
contest to select another, even an abler man on our side. The 
people of America would shed no blood in such a quarrel ; the 
people of America would raise no army to fight out a question of 
the succession to the presidency on the principles of Mexican pol- 
itics. We shall vote for Abraham Lincoln, not because of any 
of those reasons, but because, whether we will or no, even if we 
preferred another now, we can not have him ; if we desire a 
change, we can not change without bringing ruin upon the re- 
public (applause) ; and for that reason, every doubt is subordina- 
ted to the great necessities of empire. 

It is not a question, fellow-citizens, for school-boys to debate ; 
nor is it a question for men to attend, as heretofore, political 
meetings, to be decided by the wittiest speech or the best-told 
story. Blood rests upon that decision ; the being of a nation 
rests upon your judgment. Great sacrifices heretofore made are 
to be thrown away if you come to one judgment, and are to be 
fruitful in blessings if you come to another judgment. 

Sloth, and ease, and hesitation, and cupidity, and cowardice, 



VICTORY THE CONDITION OF SUCCESS. 431 

all counsel you to take another candidate, for there are burdens 
in taking Abraham Lincoln ; there are battles in placing him at 
the head of the government ; there is war at least for one year 
more, very possibly for two, it may be for three years, and it may 
be for more than three ; and, therefore,, when men resolve to take 
Abraham Lincoln for their President, they must do it as they do 
in forming the holiest of the relations of social life — for better, 
for worse — with the consciousness of what is before them ; know- 
ing the burdens that they assume; knowing the consequences 
that follow from it; knowing that, peaceful as we are here, it 
dooms fifty thousand men to death, and that they have to come 
from your brothers and from your sons — not to do his bidding, 
not to determine the wretched question whether he or some other 
man shall be President, but whether the fabric of government 
reared by our fathers shall remain untouched — whether the in- 
tegrity of republican institutions shall be preserved. (Loud 
cheers.) After this remarkable period of hesitation to which I 
have referred, when so many patriotic eyes looked to Chicago for 
comfort and support, why is it that every patriotic man that 
turned his eyes in that direction has now turned his back in that 
direction ? For it was done in the twinkling of an eye ; it was 
done within twenty-four hours ; it was done as soon as the men 
of America read the Chicago Platform. (Applause.) I have 
never for a moment hesitated in my judgment that the mass of 
American people, taxation, bloodshed, failures, to the contrary 
notwithstanding, are for the war as the only path of safety. Not 
because they want bloodshed, but because they want peace ; not 
because they want to subjugate their fellow-citizens, but because 
they are determined all shall be free. (Great cheering.) There- 
fore, when they read the Chicago Platform, and learned that there 
was even a doubt as to whether the war was to proceed, that set- 
tled their judgment on their candidate. What is that platform? 
First it begins by assuring us that the Democratic party is now 
for the Constitution and the Union, "as Jieretofore" When we 
read those words we had a measure by which we could judge 
the intensity and the character of their devotion ; and we remem- 
bered that in their hands, under their control, under the presi- 
dency of James Buchanan, and while Judge Black was Attorney 
General, and in Buchanan's cabinet, war was allowed to be made 
upon the United States with impunity ; humiliating contracts 



482 VICTORY THE CONDITION OF SUCCESS. 

for armistice were made with rebels with arms in their hands ; 
the army of the United States was scattered from one end to the 
other of its vast territory, in order that it might be away at the 
critical moment ; every sea possessed an American vessel except 
the waters of our own coast ; no arms were prepared, no precau- 
tions were taken; the warnings of Winfleld Scott were disregard- 
ed ; every arsenal was left a prey to the insidious assaults of the 
enemy, whose designs were known to the President. The Demo- 
cratic party having taken care of the Constitution and the Union 
in that way, we accept as the interpretation of their platform the 
"heretofore" of Buchanan's administration, and say that their de- 
fense and protection of the Constitution and the Union mean its 
submission to Southern dictation, its destruction before Southern 
rebellion, dissolution and death, and not preservation. (Great ap- 
plause.) And when we go -one step farther into that remarkable 
document, and read there that after four years of unsuccessful 
war — -justice, humanity, and religion require that there should be 
a cessation of hostilities with a view to the calling of a Conven- 
tion, or "some other peaceable means," to end the war and re- 
store the Union, we have an explanation that needs no comment 
as to what the first declaration meant. " Cease the war" means 
to lay down your arms, to lift your blockade, to relax the sinews 
of your arm, to induce your people to believe that peace is here, 
to treat upon equal terms with the rebellious enemies of the re- 
public, to open the door for foreign recognition, to prepare the 
way for foreign intervention. And, after all that has been 
done, if the rebels refuse your " Convention or other peaceable 
means," where' arc we ? How will you ever take up the mus- 
ket after it has been laid down ? How will you ever collect 
your army when it has once been allowed to return or almost dis- 
banded on furlough ? How will you ever strengthen the sinews 
of the nation up to the height of reopening the war after once 
you have dropped the sword from your hands ? Why, fellow- 
citizens, they who propose that know as well as I know that an 
armistice means peace — that the cessation of the war means the 
end of the war — that the end of the war means the end of coercive 
measures for the restoration of the republic; and when they once 
propose that an armistice shall be instituted, without even saying 
that if its purposes fail the sword shall again be drawn, they tell 
us, in the most distinct language, that their purpose is to stop the 



VICTORY THE CONDITION OF SUCCESS. 433 

war and take the consequences; they tell us that their purpose is 
to stop the war and not look beyond at the consequences of the 
stoppage of the war. Peace is what they want, and that is all. 
And when we turn to the letter of acceptance of General M'Clel- 
lan, there is a repetition substantially of the platform, but with no 
addition to it. He is in favor, as the Convention is in favor, of 
"perpetuating the Union ;" he thinks, as they think, that it ought 
to be perpetuated ; but he nowhere says that after an armistice 
and a failure to agree, he is in favor of taking up the sword. It 
may be that he is. I can easily believe that a general might de- 
sire to be commander-in-chief of half a million of men. But who 
and what is M'Clellan? He is what his party friends make him 
— what the men are who elect him — what they are who stand be- 
hind him. Fernando Wood has told you that whatever the pri- 
vate opinions of the candidate may be, when he is once nominated 
and elected, he will think, and speak, and act as the body of the 
great party that elected him may desire that he should think, and 
speak, and act. "He will be," says Mr. Wood, "our agent, the 
creature of our voice." And you all know what the voice of 
Fernando Wood is. (Laughter and applause.) Fernando Wood, 
a man who in the better days of the republic nobody would have 
thought it worth while to name at a public meeting, has now be- 
come one of the mischievous and poisonous reptiles that are bit- 
ing the republic to death. (Applause.) Alexander Long, of 
Ohio, Clement Vallandigham, of ill-omened fame — these are the 
men who are supporting him ; these are the men who look to 
high offices under him ; these are the men who represent the great 
mass and body of the so-called Peace Democracy ; and if there 
be any thing but a Peace Democracy any where that is not now 
supporting Abraham Lincoln, I do not know who the man is, or 
where he is. (Applause.) 

I never could find a Peace Democrat in Congress who would 
do any thing except swell a majority when his vote was not 
needed, and leave you to be defeated when his vote was required 
to make a majority. Place them in the majority, and they are 
all peace men. One would like the war to go on, for there are 
pickings, and stealings, and plunder in it ; another of them would 
like it to go on because possibly he might have some chance of 
military fame ; but the body of them, the men who must form 
the Congress, the men who must vote the money, the men who 

E E 



434 VICTORY THE CONDITION OF SUCCESS. 

must organize the army, the men who stand outside of Congress 
and send them there, are for peace ; they are against taxation ; 
they are opposed to paying two cents a box for matches. (Laugh- 
ter.) They are the people who are guilty of the wretched folly 
and hypocrisy of placing side by side the columns of taxation of 
Buchanan's administration and the present administration, as if 
"every body were as big a fool as the poor Democrats whom they 
want to cheat by that contrivance. (Applause.) And yet they 
are the men whom you are to place in power with M'Clellan ; 
they are the men who are to hold his hands in the struggle — who 
are to support him with men and money — who are to guide his 
policy ! To repeal every law on the statute-book for the carrying 
on of the war would be their first act whenever they should get a 
majority of both houses. Having a majority of one House only, 
they would palsy the majority in the other House that might be 
desirous even of furnishing the government with the means for 
carrying on the war. They would strike immediately from your 
armies 150,000 or 200,000 negro soldiers for fear they would dis- 
band the rest of the army ! They would remove the suspension 
of the habeas corpus, in order that Democratic traitors might walk 
at large and communicate with the enemy. (Applause.) There is 
no measure necessary to the conduct of the war that they are not 
already pledged to destro}'. Their canvass is against the meas- 
ures of the war, and the people of the United States have come 
to the solemn conclusion that they who are not in favor of the 
means of carrying on the war are not in favor of carrying on the 
war at all ; that they who are for paralyzing the arm of the gov- 
ernment by stripping it of the needful legislation for the conduct 
of the war, can not be trusted with the conduct of the war ; and, 
as rational men, they turn their back on those who profess before 
high Heaven that that is their purpose, and turn to men who at 
least profess to be willing to carry on the war — who at least have 
struggled to the best of their ability, be it poor or great, for four 
years to carry it on — who at least have accomplished some re- 
sults, and if they are not stripped of power now by men who, 
under the disguise of pretending to be in favor of the war, are re- 
ally against it, will, in a reasonable time, put an end to it. (Great 
applause.) Is there any other way, fellow-citizens, of restoring 
the integrity of the republic than by the bloody path of war ? 
Believe Jeff Davis when he tells you that his only terms of peace 



VICTORY THE CONDITION OF SUCCESS. 435 

are " independence," and that is only a new word for the dissolu- 
tion of the Union ; believe the men from one end to the other of 
the rebel Confederacy who tell you that all they want is to be 
" let alone," and " let alone" means that the United States shall 
march out of and abdicate more than one half of its territory. 
They tell you that they are not struggling because of slavery ; 
they are struggling for independence, and "independence" means 
the destruction of the American nationality. If, therefore, there 
be any way of persuading them to make peace on other terms 
than those of independence, let some one arise and point out the 
public man or the mass of the population any where in the South 
that has declared a willingness to make peace on those terms. 
(Applause.) They are now stretching a long finger all through 
the United States, intermeddling in our presidential election. 
They utter nightly prayers for the success of M'Clellan. They 
hope that the division upon the presidential election will ulti- 
mately place some one in power who will make terms that they 
will agree to. Has ever any body heard them say, "If you will 
elect M'Clellan we will submit to the terms of the old Constitu- 
tion as it is," in the slang phrase of the modern Democrats ; that 
they are willing to accept the old "Union as it was," in the slang 
phrase of the modern Democrats ; that they are willing to take 
any compromise ; that they are willing to take slavery in the 
whole of the Territories of the United States ; that they are will- 
ing to take the incorporation of slavery forever into the Constitu- 
tion of the United States itself; that they are willing upon any 
terms whatever to reunite with you ? Their question, gentlemen, 
is that of severance and independence, and tne Democrats are 
perpetually mumbling to themselves some unintelligible words 
about "compromise" with people who say "we want no compro- 
mise ;" terms with people who say " our terms are independence" 
— concessions to people who say " we will accept no concessions 
from your hands ;" union to people who say " death rather." 
(Applause.) Then there is, gentlemen, but one path, I say, out of 
this difficulty. I have said so from the fall of 1860 to this time. 
I said so before a sword was drawn. I said so after the secession 
ordinances were passed, and when the old fogy Convention was 
mumbling over terms of compromise in what they called a "Peace 
Congress." (Applause.) I said so when two great committees 
of the two houses of Congress were straining their nerves to get 



436 VICTORY THE CONDITION OF SUCCESS. 

something to force down the rebels' throats, which they swore 
they would throw up as soon as it was forced down. There has 
never been a day that any body, who could see beyond the length 
of his nose, since South Carolina took the first step in 1860, after 
the election of Abraham Lincoln, did not know that the only 
path to unity in this country is over bloody battle-fields; and, 
gentlemen, they are before you yet. (Great applause.) I pray 
you be under no more delusions. We have now this awful, deso- 
lating campaign because the government would persist in dream- 
ing all last winter that the rebellion was ended. And if they put 
on the night-cap and dream again this winter, Lee will be before 
Grant as strong next spring as he was last spring. You may be 
near the end of the rebellion, but there is many a sharp struggle 
before you yet, and the only way to end it is to let the rebels 
have no rest, to press on them day by day, and night by night, 
filling up the gulf between you and them with your dead sons 
and brothers if necessary, but remembering that every week of 
armistice, every day of delay, every month of winter -quarters 
means other hecatombs to fill up the gap in your march. (Tre- 
mendous applause.) And now we hear from the advocates of 
M'Clellan grave objections to the conduct of the President and 
the conduct of his administration as reasons why the Eepublican 
party should not be trusted — not the particular individual, but 
the Republican party that stand at his back, defends what he has 
done well, deplores what he has done ill or failed to do, and is re- 
solved that he shall do better in the future. (Applause.) The 
Eepublican party stands at his back and takes the responsibility 
of what has passed heretofore, and means to meet the objections 
that are made ; and while they admit, as in my judgment they 
must admit, that there arc many things that have been done 
which ought not to have been done, and which a wiser policy 
and greater acquaintance with statesmanship would have saved 
us from, yet the substantial things of government have been done 
(great applause) — done better than our antagonists could do them 
if they wanted, or would do if they were allowed to attempt. 
We hear dolorous objections about the violations of personal lib- 
erty ; we hear objections about weak men placed at the head of 
the armies ; we hear objections about the lack of vigor in the 
conduct of the war ; and the only arguments to be deduced from 
such imputations as those is not that Mr. Lincoln is not so great, 



VICTORY THE CONDITION OF SUCCESS. 437 

or so able, or so wise as somebody else, but that George B.M'Clel- 
lan ought to be put in bis place. The question is not whether 
Mr. Lincoln has done the best that any mind could conceive, nor 
even the best that he himself could do, nor whether what he has 
done is absolutely right, or absolutely in accordance with law ; 
but the question is whether his opponent would do better. "lie 
has," says a distinguished senator of Maryland, in a most elaborate 
and able speech in Brooklyn the other day in behalf of M'Clellan, 
" appointed weak and incompetent men to the command of the 
armies." I say yes, and M'Clellan at the head of them. (Great 
applause.) They say that he has punished and excluded from 
office men merely because they were the friends of George B. 
M'Clellan. I say yes, and Fitz John Porter was one of them. 
(Great applause.) They say that the war has not been conducted 
with that energy with which it ought to have been conducted, 
and which ought long since to have stamped out the rebellion. 
I say yes, and the greatest of all failures was the failure of George 
B. M'Clellan, who wasted the largest army the republic has ever 
assembled, in idleness, in and around the City of Washington, for 
nearly eight months, when not one third his number of enemies 
were within thirty-five miles in his front, and he did not dare to 
feel them with a regiment of his cavalry to ascertain their num- 
ber. (Applause.) Yes, opportunities have been lost. There was 
no opportunity equal to the opportunity of George B. M'Clellan 
in the fall of 1861 and the spring of 1862. "Lost opportunities !" 
Ay, a greater one when a broken and flying army, with a vast 
river in its rear, was allowed to escape without pursuit, and that 
was by George B. M'Clellan after Antietam. (Applause.) It may 
be that the war has been badly conducted. It is certain that the 
worst parts of its conduct have been those parts which have been 
attributed to George B. M'Clellan. It is certain that there have 
been failures. There have been no failures so disastrous, so. con- 
tinued, so inexcusable as the failure of the Peninsular campaign. 
(Applause.) There have been failures. There has been no fail- 
ure that rested on the good faith of any officer, excepting Buell's 
in Kentucky, and M'Clellan's and Fitz John Porter's failure at 
the second Bull Run battle. (Great applause.) Concede that the 
conduct of the war has been weak ; agree to every thing that our 
antagonists say; the fact that the war has continued for four years 
without the rebellion being broken is because George B. M'Clel- 



438 VICTORY THE CONDITION OF SUCCESS. 

Ian, with the uncontrolled disposition of all the armies of the 
United States for nearly a year, left it, as it is, unbroken. (Ap- 
plause.) We are told of violations of the right of personal liber- 
ty ! Personal liberty has been invaded ! If they had said that 
the personal liberty of somebody, -whose liberty ought to be re- 
spected, had been invaded, there would have been some point in 
■ it. (Applause.) If they had said that somebody had been con- 
fined who ought to have been at large, I would have listened to 
the -argument. If they had said that some loyal man had been 
maliciously arrested and maliciously confined, without a doubt 
upon the President's mind, and without a pretext of public rea- 
son, then I would agree that the President ought to be impeached. 
But when they say that the right of personal liberty has been in- 
vaded because men have been arrested without legal process, I 
beg leave to say that there is no law or Constitution in the United 
States which says that nobody shall be arrested excepting by ju- 
dicial process. The solemn language of the Constitution of the 
United States is that "no man shall be deprived of life, liberty, 
or property without due process of law." "Property" and "lib- 
erty" stand in the same category with " life." How many men 
has Abraham Lincoln shot down according to law because they 
stood in gray clothes before men in blue clothes? What sheriff's 
precept goes before Grant's cannon balls? What marshal of the 
United States is required to give him liberty to fire ? What jury 
of inquiry is summoned to ascertain whether the flag that is float- 
ing on the horizon is an innocent rag, or the emblem of rebel 
armed force? What antecedent judicial securities took place be- 
fore 20,000 men laid down and died at Gettysburg, or 60,000 men 
were killed or wounded in the campaign from this spring to the 
present time from the Eapidan down to Petersburg ? Then, so 
far as life is concerned, there is a law that is above judicial pro- 
cess. . Nobody is fool enough to deny that. Is there a law above 
judicial process, with reference likewise to liberty? If there be 
not, why do you not turn loose the rebel prisoners ? Why do 
you keep them confined for a day ? What precept has ever or- 
dered their confinement? Who sends the officers up to the lakes? 
Who crowds them into our forts? Who makes them swarm be- 
low here in Fort Delaware? Is there a judgment upon them, or 
is it that the law of the land says that men found in arms and 
seized shall be held, and that the President, finding them in arms, 



VICTORY THE CONDITION OF SUCCESS. 439 

shall hold them upon his own judgment? (Applause.) Are we 
to be told that only those actually caught in battle array shall be 
so treated ? May men furnish the enemy with munitions of war, 
or clothes, or information, or give them aid and comfort, or send 
them medicines, and yet not be within the range of indictment for 
treason, or, at the option of the country, the military security of a 
discretionary arrest? From George Washington's time down to 
the present day no man has ever doubted the legality of these 
things until the modern Democracy, having too many traitors in 
its midst, found it convenient to have these principles applied in 
practice. (Applause.) "But," it is said, "the habeas corpus has 
been suspended illegally by the President." I agree that it was 
suspended illegally by the President the first year of the war, and 
I warned him and his party friends of the illegality of, and the 
inevitable reaction in public opinion which would come if that 
were not corrected. The reaction came in the fall of 1862, and 
they supplied the omission early in 1863 by going to Congress to 
ask them to pass the requisite law to suspend it ; the law was 
passed, but still the howl goes up the habeas corpus is illegally 
suspended ! But, gentlemen, suppose the President has oppressed, 
has illegally arrested individuals, has committed all the oppres- 
sions that are ascribed to him, our opponents propose to place 
George B. M'Clellan in his place on his " record," ostentatiously 
referred to in his letter of acceptance as indicating the course of 
his own policy hereafter referred to, to supply the deficiency, to 
get rid of the different points of the Chicago Platform, and the 
first man that took a step in the direction of arresting without ju- 
dicial process was George B. M'Clellan himself. Here is his order 
to General Banks, in September, 1861 : 

"Major General X. P. Tanks: 

"General, — After a full consultation with the President, Secretaries of State, 
War, etc., it has been decided to effect the operation proposed* for the 17th. Ar- 
rangements have been made to have a government steamer at Annapolis to receive 
the prisoners and carry them to their destination. 

" Some four or five of the chief men in the affair are to be arrested to-day. 
When they meet on the 17th you will have every thing prepared to arrest the whole 
party, and be sure that none escape. 

"It is understood that you will arrange with General Dix and Governor Seward 
tha modus operandi. It has been intimated to me that the meeting might take 

* The arrest of the members of the seditious Legislature of Maryland. 



440 VICTORY THE CONDITION OF SUCCESS. 

place on the 14th ; please be prepared. I would be glad to have you advise mc 
frequently of your arrangements in regard to this very important matter. 

" If it is successfully carried out it will go far toward breaking the back-bone of the 
rebellion. It will probably be well to have a special train quietly prepared to take 
the prisoners to Annapolis. 

" I leave this exceedingly important affair to your tact and discretion — the abso- 
lute necessity of secrecy and success. 

"With the highest regard, I am, dear general, your sincere friend, 

"George B. M'Clellan, Major General U. S. A." 

The reason assigned was that the arrest would " go far toward 
breaking the back-bone of the rebellion." We who support the 
President think so too. (Applause.) While there have been 
cases of arrests which ought not to have been made, and some 
which, in my judgment, were not justifiable, and many which 
were indiscreet, in my opinion more men have been improperly 
discharged than have been improperly arrested. (Great applause.) 
But it is certain that on M'Clellan's " record" he is not the man 
to impeach the conduct of the President in that particular. 
" State rights," too, were here defied, and a sovereign Legislature 
arrested — arrested by George B. M'Clellan, whom his friend Mr. 
Attorney General Black only last night was defending and advo- 
cating in this city ; and he imputed to the administration an en- 
tire deviation from every thing that had a precedent in American 
history, especially upon the subject of State rights and personal 
liberty ; and he did that to induce the people to take George B. 
M'Clellan for President, who set the only example that has been 
exhibited any where on the American continent of the arrest of 
a Legislature in solemn session, in time of peace, at that place, and 
in that State ; for there was no armed foe in Maryland when that 
Legislature was arrested. It was swarming with traitors, but 
traitors are the men they want to be free from arrest. They were 
not armed ; they were not levying war ; they were not threaten- 
ing to levy war ; they were too pusillanimous to attempt it ; they 
were passing resolutions, receiving reports, declaring that the op- 
pression of the government was too great to be resisted. They 
were safe traitors, and they are the men that George B. M'Clellan 
arrested. But there is another objection. It is stated in the Chi- 
cago Platform that military power has been brought to bear ille- 
gally upon elections. That is the imputation made by Mr. Sena- 
tor Johnson, in his speech in Brooklyn the other day, arguing in 
behalf of George B. M'Clellan. Who set the example ? On Oc- 



VICTORY THE CONDITION OF SUCCESS. 441 

tober 29, 1861, this order was issued from the head-quarters of 
General M'Clellan, by his order: 

11 Head-quarters Army of the Fotomac, Washington, October 2!), 18G1. 

" General, — There is an apprehension among Union citizens in many parts of 
Maryland at an attempt of interference with their rights of suffrage by disunion 
citizens on the occasion of the election to take place on the Gth of November next. 

" In order to prevent this, the major general commanding directs that you send 
detachments of a sufficient number of men to different points in your vicinity where 
the elections are to be held, to protect the Union voters, and to see that no Disunion- 
ists are allowed to intimidate them, or in any way to interfere with their rights. 

" lie also desires you to arrest" — 

By what writ? 

"lie also desires you to arrest and hold in confinement till after the election all 
Disunionists who are known to have returned from Virginia recently, and who 
show themselves at the polls, and to guard effectually against any invasion of the 
peace and order of the election. For the purpose of carrying out these instructions, 
you are authorized to susjiend the habeas corpus. General Stone has received similar 
instructions to these. You will please confer with him as to the particular points 
that each shall take the control of. 

" I am, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

"B. B. Marcy, Chief of Staff. 
"Major General N. P. Banks." 

That was the first example in the United States, during this 
war, of an attempt to prevent rebels from voting. He uses a 
phrase there wider than any order that has ever been issued here- 
tofore, lie speaks of "Disunionists;" that is, men who entertain 
disunion opinions. No other order has ever gone farther than to 
say that men who have been in arms against the United States, 
or who have given aid, comfort, or encouragement to the enemy, 
shall be allowed to vote. Of Disunionists, we have twenty thou- 
sand in Maryland ; of men who have given aid and comfort, we 
have only perhaps two or three, or four thousand. General 
Schenck's order stopped at the latter. General M'Clellan's order 
covered them all (applause) ; and at that election Senator John- 
son was himself a candidate for the Legislature, and was elected, 
and never complained of the order. By that Legislature he was 
chosen to the seat in the Senate of the United States that he now 
holds, and never complained of that order. And yet he is the 
gentleman who makes that imputation against President Lincoln 
in behalf of the originator of the invasion of the freedom of the 
elective franchise in Maryland! (Great applause.) Military at 
elections ! Were I an advocate of M'Clellan I would seek some 



44:2 VICTORY THE CONDITION OF SUCCESS. 

other topic of imputation ; were I a Democrat I would never 
mention it, for fear the bloody ghosts of the thirty men and wom- 
en who were shot down while peacefully walking in the streets 
of Washington, in 1857, by the orders of James Buchanan, would 
rise and point their ghastly fingers at me. Still less as a Mary- 
land Democrat, if I were one, would I ever refer to it, when I re- 
membered that Governor Ligon, finding it impossible to control 
otherwise the indomitable spirit of the American party of Balti- 
more, summoned six thousand soldiers to control them on the day 
of election, and failed. And of all the men in the wide world to 
urge that argument, the last man is the lion. Reverdy Johnson, 
who gave the opinion to Governor Ligon that it was legal to do 
so ! If any one has any curiosity in reference to that sort of lit- 
erature, here is the opinion. Of what sort of stuff are these men 
made, that they venture to fling in our faces their own vices, or 
their complicity with ours? It is the most overwhelming of de- 
fenses of the conduct of the administration against things that I 
myself think unadvisable and frequently illegal, to find that its 
antagonists arc steeped up to their elbows in the only crimes they 
can cast upon it. If they, not responsible for the supreme direc- 
tion of affairs, yet entertained the opinion that these things were 
allowable when the pressure of the necessity of the public admin- 
istration was not on them, how can they blame with any reason 
those who, being responsible for the conduct of affairs, have re- 
sorted to the very measures that they have themselves executed 
and vindicated ? (Applause.) 

" But," our opponents say, " we will carry on the war on Chris- 
tian principles!" (Laughter.) The only principle of war that I 
remember to have read of in the Christian dispensation is that, if 
one smites you on the right cheek, you should turn unto him the 
left also. I take it that is the Christian principle upon which the 
Democrats contemplate carrying on this war. (Laughter and ap- 
plause.) " Christian principles." When they refer to the con- 
duct of Christian nations in war, they must be taken to refer to 
some of the great nations that have waged war under great emer- 
gencies like these ; and if so, I ask their historians (for they are 
learned every now and then) whether they remember the rebel- 
lion in India, when Christian England shot tho King of Delhi in 
cold blood, in his own palace, unarmed, after the capture of the 
city, and blew from the mouths of their cannons men who had 



VICTORY THE CONDITION OF SUCCESS. 443 

only rebelled to get their natural rights, against a foreign nation. 
(Applause.) Or, if they do not like the morals of Protestant En- 
gland, do they remember the day when Catholic France by her 
marshals smoked to death in an Algerian cave an army of her 
rebel enemies ? Or, if they do not like Catholic France, will they 
take Greek Eussia, and tell me whether they wish to apply the 
Christian principles that now make Poland smoke with blood of 
her sons for claiming their national right ? Or, if these are not 
the "Christian principles" to which they refer, will they point to 
some other war conducted by greater and more Christian nations 
upon more humane principles, and point out to us the way that 
we shall follow them ? Which of these things have we done ? 
Gentlemen, after some small reading of history by way of amuse- 
ment, I desire to challenge those learned pundits, and I say that 
they can produce nowhere, in all the range of history, sacred or 
profane, ancient or modern, any war of four years' duration where 
one half the men were arranged on either side that have here 
been ranged in battle, any one year of which did not exceed all 
the atrocities that the United States troops have committed in 
four years of war — none — none whatever. (Applause.) I have 
mentioned the recent instances. Who would think of mention- 
ing the great desolation of the Thirty Years' War, that left Ger- 
many a waste? Who would mention the seventy years' war of 
the Netherlands, where the gallows followed the advancing Span- 
ish troops? In the civil wars of England, did not execution and 
blood follow victory? There never has been a war conducted 
upon principles that could be called so nearly Christian, except- 
ing that the only Christian principle I can apply to the conduct 
of war is that it shall be short, and sharp, and merciful. (Ap- 
plause.) And the danger of this war has been that the President 
could not rise to the height of the emergency, and steel his heart 
against what was pity in the individual, but cruelty in the ruler. 
Ay, many a man sleeps this day in a soldier's grave because the 
President would not execute military law upon deserters; and 
many a bloody battle has been lost, and many a regiment torn to 
pieces, because traitors were allowed to go free in the open day, 
and carry information of the march of our troops, and of their 
numbers, to the enemy. Gentlemen, war is war. No other word 
is its equivalent. It needs no definition. It is the greatest de- 
struction in the shortest time. That is mercy, and that is wisdom. 



444 VICTORY THE CONDITION OF SUCCESS. 

Now, gentlemen, I have one other word to say to you about the 
Chicago Platform. It proposes^ in certain contingencies, that the 
Democrats shall rebel, and I do not think that an idle threat. I 
desire to treat it as I feel with regard to it — as a contingency that 
may not be very far off. We have the Democratic party in arms 
at the South ; we have had them here in sympathy with the 
armed Democrats of the South ever since the war broke out, and 
if the leaders get the opportunity, they will, as they have hereto- 
fore tried to do, put the Democratic party of the North in arms 
with them. There have been some efforts in that direction al- 
ready. We know that when M'Clellan was removed from com- 
mand, such was the temper of a certain portion of his officers, so 
contemptuous were they with regard to the government at Wash- 
ington, so devoted personally to M'Clellan, so outraged at the ex- 
ertion of the simple prerogative of the President, that they ad- 
vised him to march to Washington ; and these men were not de- 
nounced, and have not been punished to this day ; but his friends 
claim it as a virtue that he did not do what they suggested ! 
Judge of a man who requires that his virtue should be found in 
refusing to violate his oath and draw his sword against the gov- 
ernment that placed it in his hands, and who could be silent about 
such a suggestion ! Then, on the eve of the battle at Gettysburg, 
we had the rebellion in New York — they call it mob, I call it a 
rebellion — Seymour's rebellion ; the rebellion that Seymour's 
" friends" and M'Clellan's friends got up to resist the arms of the 
United States, or perhaps it was to help carry on the war by aid- 
ing the draft. (Laughter.) That was stamped out rudely, "ille- 
gally," our Democratic friends would say, for men were shot 
without a sheriff's process. But, legally or illegally, it was ex- 
tinguished effectually. (Cheers.) The next thing we hear of is 
a tremendous struggle in Indiana and Illinois, a political struggle 
for the possession of those States. Gentlemen acquainted with 
them said, "The loss of Indiana is not the loss of an election, it is 
the loss of a State to the Union ;" and scarcely had a gentleman 
made that remark to me, being himself a resident of Indiana, than 
arms hidden were discovered, the tracks of a great conspiracy 
were developed, and they were found to be standing on the brink 
of a volcano, prepared doubtless for the day of the millennium of 
the Chicago revolution ! And they, not yet taught by the reso- 
lute determination of the American people to deal with traitors 



VICTORY THE CONDITION OF SUCCESS. 445 

by force, and supposing that men who have met the Southern 
people in arms would be frightened by the Democrats in arms in 
the North, passed a resolution declaring that if the violation of 
the elective franchise in Maryland, and Kentucky, and Delaware 
was repeated, they would regard it as cause of revolution, and 
they adjourned their Convention to meet upon the call of their 
National Committee or President. Some persons thought that 
was with a view to the possible refusal of the nomination by 
M'Clellan. I think any body who so thought was very short- 
sighted in public affairs. It meant to keep a recognized repre- 
sentative of the rebellious element of the Democratic party to^ 
gether, so that if they failed by a small vote, and the impatience 
of taxation, and the weariness of the war, and the languor of the 
administration would allow them an opportunity, they could call 
their Convention together, and spring to arms, and make a war 
for the presidency. That was what they meant. The interference 
with elections in Maryland ! Why did they slap their own can- 
didate in the face ? They would not have done that without a 
cause. They knew what he had done, but they wanted to make 
the preparation for a rebellion. They knew that the American 
people are tender upon the subject of the elective franchise. They 
knew that there was great discontent, just or unjust; great impa- 
tience ; great weariness of the war ; great disappointment at the 
failure to obtain great results after great means had been granted. 
They thought that if they could only show an immense power in 
the Northern States, carrying a majority of the free States, and 
they should happen to be overbalanced by the vote of the border 
States, they could persuade the people that the vote of the border 
States which saved the Congress last time was not a legal vote, 
and precipitate them into rebellion, and they are waiting now that 
chance. Whether they will have the bad boldness to execute 
it remains to be seen ; but the people of the United States have 
taken the best security against the opportunity. A lesson has 
been read them in Indiana that they are not likely shortly to for- 
get. (Great applause.) It has been re-enforced in Ohio under the 
odium of Vallandigham. (Tremendous applause.) And Penn- 
sylvania, though stripped of thousands of her voting population, 
has responded to the Western voice. (Great applause.) What 
New York will do nobody knows ; but let New York look to 
her port if she dare to wriggle even under what the majority do. 



446 VICTORY THE CONDITION OF SUCCESS. 

(Applause.) They have tried, gentlemen, more than once to bul- 
ly the United States, and they found it a hard bulldog to bully. 
(Laughter and applause.) All through the campaign of 1862 the 
government was taunted with its hostility to George B. M'Clellan. 
They thought the government did not dare to remove him, or 
they thought if it did that he would have the pluck, and his sol- 
diers would have the villainy, to follow him in a march on Wash- 
ington ; and it was met then as it will be met now, with a very 
short intimation to them that there are other generals in the 
United States besides M'Clellan, and other armies besides M'Clel- 
lan's. (Vehement and long-continued applause.) They can be- 
gin, gentlemen. Perhaps they will not end the strife that they 
begin. But the only way to deal with events of this kind is not 
to do as Mr. Buchanan did, and encourage them to grow suddenly 
from infancy to manhood, and endow them with gigantic power 
before you strike them, but take their first threat for an act, and 
smash them to the brain. (Great applause.) 

But, gentlemen, the policy of the President, it is said, has di- 
vided the North and united the South ! So say the advocates of 
M'Clellan — so said Senator Johnson. Will any body do me the 
favor to tell me when the North was united? Was it at the 
presidential election of 1860 ? Was it in the winter of 1860-61 ? 
Was it when Sumter was fired on, and Pennsylvania sympathiz- 
ers with the South said, " Send troops to conquer the South, and 
we will begin the war in the cars!" There are gentlemen who 
have heard that, I know. It was told me when I was in Phila- 
delphia at the time that Butler's regiment was passing through 
to go to Annapolis. " Go South and we will begin the war in 
the cars," was the unity of the North in 1861. Who that was 
ever for the prosecution of the war and with the administration 
is now against it? Name him, some one of the thousands here. 
(Applause.) There never was a day that the great mass of the 
Democratic party and its chief leaders were not opposed to the 
war, as Buchanan was opposed to the war. They had a majority 
in the lower house of Congress, and in the Senate at that day, all 
Democrats, and all opposed to war. Nay, they were afraid to 
breathe the word "war." How is it with the people out of doors? 
Many patriotic men forgot their Democratic relations and rushed 
to the war ; but where are they now ? What Democratic vote 
has come up from the army ? They have joined " the crusade 



VICTORY THE CONDITION OF SUCCESS. 447 

against the South." (Great applause.) But those that staid at 
home, those that carped at the administration, those that sneered 
at the obscurity of its members and the incompetency of its head, 
those who prated about "negro equality" and an "Abolition war," 
have they now, for the first time, divided the North ? Or are 
there more of them now to-day than there were in 1861? Or are 
there not now ten radicals for one that existed then ? — then a mi- 
nority, now a majority of the supporters of the administration 
this day. (Applause.) Things that men shrank from then, they 
now regard as the dictates of the holiest patriotism and the sub- 
limest wisdom ; for they have been taught by the teacher Experi- 
ence, and none have gone back excepting those sows of the De- 
mocracy that go back to wallow in the mire from which they nev- 
er were washed clean. (Laughter.) Divided the North ! "What 
divided it? United the South! "When was it not united? On 
the 4th of August, 1861, General M'Clellan wrote thus to the 
President of the United States : 

"The object of the present war differs from those in which nations are engaged 
mainly in this: that the purpose of ordinary war is to conquer a peace, and make a 
treaty on advantageous terms. In this contest, it lias become necessary to crush a 
population sufficiently numerous, intelligent, and warlike to constitute a nation. 
We have not only to defeat their armed and organized forces in the field, but to dis- 
play such an overwhelming strength as will convince all our antagonists, especially 
those of the governing, aristocratic class, of the utter impossibility of resistance." 

Now what has occasioned that unity ? 

"Our late reverses make this course imperative." 

It was Bull Run that united the South, or rather consolidated 
what before was united, welded into one unbroken mass the iron 
which hitherto we have vainly striven to rend asunder. That is 
the testimony of General M'Clellan. 

"The contest began with a class ; now it is with a people — our military success- 
es can alone restore the former issue." 

I can quote no higher authority upon this point — certainly not 
to our antagonists — none higher to myself, for it conforms entirely 
with my own judgment. From the day of Bull Run to this day 
there has never welled up by accident any where in the broad re- 
gion of the South one bubble of discontent. The South was made 
a unit by the firing on Fort Sumter. It antedated Bull Run ; and 
any body who has ever conversed either with gentlemen of the 
United States arm}'-, or others resident in the South who have 
found it necessary to fly from there, knows that that collision in 



448 VICTORS EHB CONDITION OF SUCCESS 

arms SUIlk every . . u in the Stele of Virginia, made N 

antry a unit, as instantly as the Chicago Platform 

united the dividing fragments of the Republican party within a 
month 01 two past. Then we did not unite the South. They 

united themselves to gain their independenee, and they are strng- 
■v for it. They will be disunited when the band of iron 
IS torn asunder. They will be disunited when 
lissolved And when thev are disunit- 
ed you will find that there will be no difficulty in rear 

- govern-- ad bringing them back to their normal rela- 

tions to the national government Bui we did not unite them; 
they united themselves. Bui now what oaused the divisions of 

the North ? We are told that the " negro polioj " lias dft ided the 
N. :'... Well, what pa . and when? In L861 the war be- 

1 ha\ B shown you that then the North was divided. Every 
s lived in the North knows it; but it beeame patent. 
to every eye in the summer of 1862. Then was the canvass in 
Pennsylvania, in Indiana, in Ohio, in New York. 1 think there 
D present who remember that there was a division in 
Pennsylvania at that time, and that some Congressmen wove 
Lost I think there are gentlemen who remember that Ohio was 
Swept, and thai only live Republican members survived in the 
lower house of Congress. Indiana and Illinois were stripped of 
their previous majorities, and overwhelming majorities were 
against the administration. Governor Seymour was elected in 
Xew York. There was division then, and divisions upon 
identical ground that it is now alleged to have arisen upon; and 
up to that day what bad U e govemme] was do1 - 

:d by the express words, the formal advice of George B, 
AfQellan, on the Negro Question? What one law was passed, 
what one executive ad was done, that he did not in writing and 
in print formally advise and approve ? 

I boa your pardon tor quoting again from a letter written by 

rare B, M'Clellan at a very significant date, on the 7th of Jury, 
1862, a: Harrison's Landing, when one would have supposed that 
the care of his army and military operations would more appro- 
priately have occupied his mind than penning politieal instruct 
to the President of the United S - Here is his advice: 

■• Military arrests should not be talented except in places ■where active hostilities 



WCTOOT THE 00 

. I ai a comment D] 

! allowed •■-. 

authority of the 
-. as in oth - 

On *... , : . 362, Cong 

rmy to be concerned in i :\tive 

slaves to the.. B M'Clellan did r.-. 

that law. 

'.raband tinder the a" 
should receive it." 

On the 6tfa [area al- 
lowed by their mi in any manner to aid the r 
lion should be free. ' B. .Ian think3 they ougr.t to 
he f . within the military lines of the 
Unitf ; did not disapprove of that act of ( 

"'I ment to appropriate permanently to its own H 

claim-; to dare labor -. ertcJ, and the right or 
therefor rtliould b 

Ti. 'ritten on the 7th of July, 1862, and on the 17th of 

arnc month, as if in obedience to that very letter, in perfect 
,rrnity with its precise pro f au- 

thor/ ./lent to accept and use as many persons of Afri- 

can descent as he . I to aid in sup .lion. 

(Great applause.) If M'Clellan disapproved of that law aft 
was passed, he advised it before it \ A. 

"This principle might be extended." 

>W, gentlemen, you will hardly believe J when I read 

to you the next words : 

"This principle might be extended upon the grounds of military necessity." 
(Laughter and applatr- ) 

Did you ever hear those words impeached a3 savoring of 
rn? 

"Upon ground.? of military necessity and security." 

To whom? 
"To all the slaves of a particular State." 

The government to confiscate to its own use all the slaves of a 

particular State, with compensation, on the ground of military ne- 

ity! (Applause.) Why, gentlemen, he was three months 

ahead of the Emancipation Proclamation. ( Applause.) And 

F F 



450 VICTORY THE CONDITION OF SUCCESS. 

what is bis comment? What is his purpose? To serve the 
United States ! 

"Thus working manumission in such State." 

Thus working manumission in such State on the ground of 
military necessity, by the paramount authority of the government 
of the United States, confiscating to its own service only for form's 
"sake, in order that manumission might be carried throughout the 
whole State. And where ? In the rebel States, where men were 
in arms against the government, where there was some excuse for 
the authority of Congress to do what he intimated ? No. "And 
in Missouri" — a loyal State of this Union. " Perhaps in Western 
Virginia," just organizing as a new State. "And possibly even 
in Maryland ; the expediency of sucli a measure can only be a 
question of time." 

Now, gentlemen, is it not the arch-fiend's mock, a man like that 
to talk about the President's having divided the North on the Ne- 
gro Question? (Great applause.) The President, in my judg- 
ment, overstepping his legal authority — I do not agree with 
M'Clellan any more than I do with him on that — on the 22d of 
September, 1862, issued his monitory proclamation of freedom, 
promising thereafter to make it peremptory. He never dreamed 
that his power went into a loyal State with an existing State 
government; he never dreamed that "military necessity" would 
justify him in turning the slaves of Maryland and Kentucky, and 
Western Virginia and Missouri, free ; yet George B. M'Clellan, 
the " Conservative" candidate for the presidency, the candidate 
opposed to "negro equality," the candidate who represents that 
party who impute to the President the division of the North on 
the Negro Question — while Mr. Lincoln was wrestling with the 
Western parsons on the question of emancipation, screwing his 
courage up to the sticking-point, and endeavoring to find his way 
through the mists of his conscience to do what the people wanted 
him to do, and what he could not see his way to do, M'Clellan is 
already in the seventh heaven of emancipation, and tells him to 
do it by virtue of military necessity. (Great applause.) We only 
made one mistake, gentlemen ; we did not take George B. M'Clel- 
lan for the Emancipation candidate for the presidency. (Laugh- 
ter.) That brings us up to 1862, in September, and October, and 
November. Was there division in the North then? Was Penn- 
sylvania with the administration ? or New York with the admin- 



VICTORY THE CONDITION OF SUCCESS. 45 1 

istration? or Ohio? or Indiana? or Illinois? Was not the whole 
body of the great central States of the republic with th,e enemies 
of the republic? Did you not lose every State government where 
there was a contest at that time ? Then there was division — di- 
vision when the President was stepping tenderly and slowly along 
behind the longer strides of George B. M'Clellan on the Negro 
Question toward emancipation. Who divided the North? Gen- 
tlemen, the Origin of all Evil divided the North when he put "De- 
mocracy" in it, and until he is bound with that chain which Keve- 
lation speaks of, that division will be here. And you must be just 
as much upon your guard against it politically as you must be 
against the great enemy of mankind spiritually, and pray God to 
preserve you from it, or it will bind and chain you yet. But some- 
thing has taken place since 1862. We are divided now ; but how? 
In 1862 the division was on their side, they being the majority. 
To-day, in this day of wretched radicalism and awful taxation, 
this day of blood and waste, there is division ; but the majority is 
on our side. (Great applause.) The " crazy men" have turned 
out to be the prophets ; the " radical maniacs" have turned out to be 
wise statesmen. Energy for the thousandth time has been shown 
to be stronger than hesitating weakness. When a thing is to be 
done, the shortest way is the best way to do it, and brings strength 
and energy with it. (Cheers.) The country to-day stands com- 
mitted to this: the end of the war, the integrity of the govern- 
ment, and the extinction of the cause of the war, slavery. (Tre- 
mendous applause.) Our strength has grown in proportion as the 
" black Abolitionists" have got near the President's ear (cheers), 
and the men of the Blair school have got far from it. We want 
no division around that ear. (Laughter.) Why, gentlemen, trace 
the progress of events and see if there be not, as plain as daylight, 
the tracings of the ringer of God working out chastisement for the 
iniquities of ourselves and our fathers, and blessings for our pos- 
terity. First, with timid steps, Congress passed a law saying that 
negroes employed to aid the rebellion should be free. Then they 
enacted that officers of the army should not return fugitives. 
Then they abolished slavery in the District of Columbia, and on 
M'Clellan's advice paid the masters for their emancipated slaves 
largely more than their average value. ■ 

Then, in the same year, they passed a law authorizing the Pres- 
ident to employ negroes to aid in suppressing the rebellion. Then 



452 VICTORY THE CONDITION OF SUCCESS. 

came the premonitory proclamation of freedom. Then, on the 1st 
of January, 1863, came the proclamation of freedom, which has 
rested to' this day a mere declaration, and will not be more until 
the President shall approve an act of Congress making it law. 
But it was an utterance, though illegal, in the right direction. 
.Then came the admission of West Virginia, upon condition that 
"she should abolish slavery. (Applause.) And that expunged 
from the political law of the United States the great principles of 
the Missouri Compromise, which was that Congress could impose 
and should impose no conditions upon the admission of a State. 
It was another step in the progress toward the supremacy of the 
national authority. And then followed emancipation in Missouri, 
first moved by her radical men, and then, when they were about 
to be successful, seized on by the " Conservatives," and converted 
into a temporary and remote emancipation. Still it was emanci- 
pation. And then, under the auspices of Colonel (now General) 
Birney, and General Schenck, and Mr. Stanton, with the sympa- 
thy of Mr. Chase, but against the opposition of every body else 
connected with the government in Washington — by the assump- 
tion on their part of grave responsibilities — commenced the great 
system of negro enlistments in Maryland, the recruits to be used 
as substitutes for the whites, which began the great emancipation 
contest there. (Applause.) And then came the law of the last 
Congress, which declared that bond and free owed themselves — 
not by reason of their masters, but themselves — military service 
to the United States ; formally placing it upon the statute-book 
that they were entitled to volunteer, and, as volunteers, should re- 
ceive such bounties as the United States government was in the 
habit of giving, and that the slaves should be subject to draft, put 
upon the same rolls, and drawn from the same bos, according to 
the same proportions as the white subjects of the republic (cheers), 
and now more than 100,000 are in arms for our defense. On the 
12th and 13th of October the State of Maryland sealed emancipa- 
tion, and made herself free (great applause) — made herself free 
without the aid of those in power in Washington — free by her 
own act, in the face of strenuous opposition to the particular forms 
that it assumed — cheered on by the energetic countenance of a 
citizen of your own State f the Secretary of War, and, beside him, 
none — aided at the dead point of the machinery by liberal gentle- 
men here and in Boston — elsewhere receiving no aid — free by the 



VICTORY THE CONDITION OF SUCCESS. 453 

untouched and untrammeled vote of her own citizens, although 
Mr. Attorney General Black had the insolence last night to say that 
the great majority of her people had been placed by the adminis- 
tration, and by outrageous frauds, under the control of a " corrupt 
and venal minority." Gentlemen, the corruptest of the corrupt 
traitors in Maryland would stand above him in political honesty. 
(Applause.) He, the apologist of the Lecompton villainy, is a 
jjretty person to criticise the free conduct of the Maryland people, 
who have just decided for freedom by a vote as close as yours at 
the late election, and as free as yours, with traitors perjuring them- 
selves to vote, and voting every where, without any body to touch 
them. The imputation came from an appropriate source. One 
of the ministers of the infamies of Buchanan's administration, 
stained with the blood of the Washington massacre and the fraud 
and blood of Kansas, taunts the people of Maryland with being 
under the influence of a corrupt and venal minority ! Why, he 
can teach corruption and venality to the inhabitants of our pen- 
itentiary. (Laughter and applause.) But there we are. It is 
possible that the gentlemen of Chicago may rebel ; I don't see 
any other remedy for it than that. (Laughter.) It is done. 
Now, at this day, when we have brought the whole mass and 
body of the Republican party — I use a more comprehensive 
jDhrase, all men who arc supporting the administration in the con- 
duct of the war and its general policy — when we have brought 
the whole body and mass of them up to that point, to these rad- 
ical measures, these great regions won to freedom, these great 
steps toward the maintenance of the equality of the rights of all 
mankind, these steps in national wisdom, these steps which have 
brought a vast population of a different color but great patriotism 
to the support of the government — after these steps, I say, we 
stand to-day more united, stronger, agreeing better in opinion, 
more resolutely determined to meet the public enemies, more 
united about the instruments that we shall use to smite them 
down than at any other period — and the people are with us ! I 
rather think that; instructed by the lessons of this latter day, the 
men who slipped secretly to the President's ear and advised him 
to pocket the bill that was carried through both branches of Con- 
gress by the whole mass of his supporters to consolidate the legal 
freedom of the slaves of the rebel States, and give them judicial 
guarantees — the men who gave that secret advice and pushed the 



454 VICTORY THE CONDITION OF SUCCESS. 

bill off in the Senate until it could be defeated without the re- 
sponsibility of a veto, will not repeat the advice at the coming- 
session of Congress. (Great applause.) The thunder of the com- 
ing majorities will reach even their dead hearts and dull ears. 
The fact that the mass of the American people are resolved that 
no slave shall breathe American air will become intelligible to 
"every mind. (Tremendous applause.) Trembling and doubting 
Conservatives, with their gouty feet, will cease to stand in the way 
of the march of the nation to universal freedom. (Great cheer- 
ing.) They will be walked over, or pushed aside, or forgotten, or 
left to mumble with toothless gums over the old women's tales of 
their boyhood. Wise men, firm men, in the vigor of their years, 
with reason unimpaired, and eyes that can see the teachings of 
the time, and who have read deep in the bloody lesson of this da}^, 
will apply the lesson for the benefit of themselves and their chil- 
dren, and go down honored and rejoicing to the grave that closes 
over them, but buries them in a free land. (Great applause.) 
Trust not conservatism — the wretched respectability that covers 
up every corruption — that defends every iniquity — that main- 
tains every wrong — that sanctifies it by appealing to the past, and 
subordinates every moral consideration to maintaining what is, 
because they have grown up in it, and grown fat by it, and profit- 
ed by it, and been in the habit of bowing down low before it. It 
is to the young generation that have stood in the front of flaming 
rebellion, and extinguished its fires, that the republic looks to 
hereafter to guide it in civil as well as in military affairs. (Great 
applause.) And when, gentlemen, the people shall have elected 
their President, they will let him know that whatever his procliv- 
ities or disposition may be, whatever doubts may encumber or 
hang around his mind still, whatever may be his private opinions, 
they must be subordinated to the will of the American people. 
(Great applause.) If he does that, then he will have a peaceful, 
quiet, glorious, magnificent administration, with the sun of peace 
blazing over its declining days ; and if he do not, woe to him be- 
fore the tribunal of history and in the minds of his countrymen. 

Gentlemen, I have said almost all that I want to say. ("Go 
ahead," " Go on.") All that I wish to add is this : We are now 
on trial for our lives before the tribunal of history. Nations that 
are born to empire must be content to go through grievous trials, 
and we are going through ours. Whether a people with popular 
institutions can conduct great wars, bear great burdens, submit to 



VICTORY THE CONDITION OF SUCCESS. 455 

great disasters, and still keep their government intact, submit to 
rulers whom they do not approve, and whose conduct is not al- 
ways equal to the emergency ; whether a people can rise to the 
height of that enormous self-sacrifice, the subordination of their 
passions, and their impatience, and their interest to the great par- 
amount interest of simply standing together (for that is the mean- 
ing of nationality), simply doing what their leaders direct, sub- 
mitting and not rebelling, whether their judgment accords with 
what is ordered or not — whether this people shall rise to that 
height or not, I was going to say is a question that depends on 
this canvass. I beg pardon of the American people ; it has been 
proved already. The nations of the Old World — phlegmatic John 
Bull or any of them — suffering what we have suffered, would have 
torn their own government to pieces in a furious effort after some 
short way to relief. The people of America have exhibited the 
wisdom of the highest statesmanship, that which would have add- 
ed another flower to the garland of such a statesman as Richelieu 
or Chatham, by their patient submission to the grievances of the 
time, and their acceptance, quietly and submissively, of the ne- 
cessities of empire, the necessary losses, the necessary inconven- 
iences, the necessary agony and bloodshed. All that they have 
now to do is resolutely to determine that, having gone through 
the greater part of the suffering which they will be called upon 
to endure during the war, they will only endure a little longer ; 
they will only not fail in the very hour and crisis of victory, for 
he that holds out the longest is sure of the victory. The only 
criterion of a great nationality is the capacity of endurance. 
There are many nations that have exhibited brilliancy upon the 
battle-field, great soldierly qualities, great capacities for industry; 
but none is born to empire, none is born for long life, none will 
live in history, none will vindicate the right and the power of the 
people to govern themselves, excepting those that are endowed 
with the old Roman instinct of never submitting while disaster 
prevails, never yielding till victorious peace has sanctioned the 
power of the republic to maintain its integrity. (Great applause.) 
If we but bear that great example in mind, we shall more than 
equal the duration in time, the extent in territory, the greatness 
in power, the magnificence in resources, and infinitely surpass in 
the beneficence of our influence the first great example of free re- 
publican government that the world ever saw. (Enthusiastic ap- 
plause.) 



JOINT RESOLUTION ON MEXICAN AFFAIRS. 

The joint resolution, adopted unanimously on the 4th of April by the 
House of Representatives, declaring what should be the policy of the 
government in relation to the French interference in Mexico, had not 
been concurred in by the Senate. It was thought there unnecessary 
and imprudent to publish any such declaration in the existing condition 
of affairs during the still pending rebellion, and while its passage might 
complicate our relations with France. It was supposed it might wear 
the appearance of a threat, and it was deemed safer to allow the French 
government to retreat from any position incautiously assumed, and only 
because of supposed or expected results of the rebellion here, when that 
government should find out its own mistake, not less in that respect than 
in regard to the practicability of building- up a Mexican empire. Pre- 
vious to the rising of the first session of Congress (July 4, 1864), the 
House Committee on Foreign Affairs, to which was referred the com- 
munication of the Secretary of State containing the correspondence with 
the United States Minister at Paris in relation to the House joint reso- 
lution, had, on the 27th of June, made a report in relation thereto. At 
the subsequent session (December 15), that report and resolution append- 
ed (written by Mr. Davis as chairman), of the House Committee on For- 
eign Affairs, was presented to the House as follows : 

The Committee on Foreign Affairs have examined the corre- 
spondence submitted by the President relative to the joint reso- 
lution on Mexican affairs with the profound respect to which it is 
entitled, because of the gravity of its subject and the distinguished 
source from which it emanated. 

They regret that the President should have so widely departed 
from the usage of constitutional governments as to makef a pend- 
ing resolution of so grave and delicate a character thef&ibject of 
diplomatic explanations. They regret still more that the Presi- 
dent should have thought proper to inform a foreign government 
of a radical and serious conflict of opinion and jurisdiction be- 
tween the depositories of the legislative and executive power of 
the United States. 

No expression of deference can make the denial of the right of 
Congress constitutionally to do what the House did with absolute 
unanimity other than derogatory to their dignity. 



JOINT RESOLUTION ON MEXICAN AFFAIRS. 457 

They learn with surprise that, in the opinion of the President, 
the form and term of expressing the judgment of the United 
States on recognizing a monarchical government imposed on a 
neighboring republic is a "purely executive question, and the 
decision of it constitutionally belongs, not to the House of Repre- 
sentatives, nor even to Congress, but to the President of the Unit- 
ed States." 

This assumption is equally novel and inadmissible. No Pres- 
ident has ever claimed such an exclusive authority. No Con- 
gress can ever permit its expression to pass without dissent. 

It is certain that the Constitution nowhere confers such author- 
ity on the President. 

The precedents of recognition, sufficiently numerous in this 
revolutionary era, do not countenance this view ; and if there be 
one not inconsistent with it, the committee have not found it. 

All questions of recognition have heretofore been debated and 
considered as grave questions of national policy, on which the 
will of the people should be expressed in Congress assembled ; 
and the President, as the proper medium of foreign intercourse, 
has executed that will. If he has ever anticipated its expression, 
we have not found the case. 

The declaration and establishment of the independence of the 
Spanish American colonies first brought the question of recogni- 
tion of new governments or nations before the government of the 
United States ; and the precedents then set have been followed 
ever since, even by the present administration. 

The correspondence now before us is the first attempt to depart 
from that usage, and deny the nation a controlling deliberative 
voice in regulating its foreign policy. 

The following are the chief precedents on recognition of new 
governments, and the policy of the United States government on 
that topic : 

On the 9th of February, 1821, Henry Clay moved in the House 
of Eepresentatives to amend the Appropriation Bill by the fol- 
lowing clause : 

"For an outfit, and one year's salary, to such minister as the President, by and 
with the consent of the Senate, may send to any government of South America, 
which has established and is maintaining its independency on Spain, a sum not ex- 
ceeding $18,000." It failed. 

On the 10th of February, he moved that the House of Repre- 



458 JOINT KESOLUTION ON MEXICAN AFFAIRS. 

sentatives participates with the people of the United States in the 
deep interest which they feel for the success of the Spanish prov- 
inces of South America, which are struggling for their liberty and 
independence, and that it will give its constitutional support to 
the President of the United States whenever he may deem it ex- 
pedient to recognize the sovereignty and independence of any of 
the said provinces. 

A motion to amend by the proviso 

" that this resolution shall not be construed to interfere with the independent ex- 
ercise of the treaty-making power," 

and another, 

" that the House approves of the course heretofore pursued by the President of the 
United States with regard to the said provinces," 

were negatived. 

The resolution was adopted, and a committee appointed to lay 
it before President Monroe. 

The committee, on the 17th of February, reported 

"That the President assured the committee that, in common with the people of 
the United States and the House of Representatives, he felt great interest in tiie 
success of the provinces of South America, which are struggling to establish their 
freedom and independence, and that he would take the resolution into deliberate 
consideration, with the most perfect respect for the distinguished body from which 
it had emanated." 

So the House of Eepresentatives took the initiative toward rec- 
ognizing the new republics. The amendment to the Appropri- 
ation Bill would have been a legislative recognition. The reso- 
lution was a formal statement of the opinion of the House to the 
President, which he did not think beyond their constitutional au- 
thority. 

At the first session of the next Congress, the House of Eepre- 
sentatives, on the motion of Mr. Nelson, of Virginia, resolved 

" That the President of the United States be requested to lay before this House 
such communications as maybe in the possession of the executive, from the agents 
of the United States with the governments south of the United States, which have 
declared their independence, and the communications from the agents of such gov- 
ernments in the United States with the Secretary of State, as tend to show the po- 
litical condition of those governments, and the state of the war between them and 
Spain, as it may be consistent with the public interest to commmunicate." 

President Monroe answered the application on the 8th of March 
in an elaborate message, of which the following extracts sufficient- 



JOINT RESOLUTION ON MEXICAN AFFAIRS. 459 

ly show that he did not think recognition "a purely executive 
question, and that the decision of it constitutionally belongs, "not 
to the House of Eepresentatives, nor even to Congress, but to the 
President of the United States :" 

"In transmitting to the House of Representatives the documents called for by 
the resolution of that House of the 30th of January, I consider it my duty to invite 
the attention of Congress to a very important subject, and to communicate the sen- 
timents of the executive on it; that should Congi-ess entertain similar sentiments, 
there may be such co-operation between the two departments of the government as 
their respective rights and duties may require." 

"This contest has now reached such a stage and been attended with such deci- 
sive success on the part of the provinces, that it merits the most profound consider- 
ation, whether their right to the rank of independent nations, with all the advantage 
incident to it in their intercourse with the United States, is not complete." 

After narrating the events, he proceeds: 

"When the result of such a contest is manifestly settled, the new governments 
have a chum to recognition by other powers which ought not to be resisted." 

"When we regard, then, the great length of time which the war has been prose- 
cuted, the complete success which has attended it in favor of the provinces, the 
present condition of the parties, and the utter inability of Spain to produce any 
change in it, we are compelled to conclude that its fate is settled, and that the prov- 
inces which have declared their independence, and are in the enjoyment of it, ought 
to be recognized." 

" In proposing this measure, it is not contemplated to change thereby in the 
slightest manner our friendly relations with either of the parties." 

" The measure is proposed under a thorough conviction that it is in strict accord 
with the law of nations, and that the United States owe it to their position and 
character in the world, as well as to their essential interests, to adopt it." 

"Should Congress concur in the view herein presented, they will doubtless sec the 
propriety of making the necessary appropriations for carrying it into effect." 

It is quite apparent that President Monroe was far from coun- 
tenancing the opinion that the form and time in which the Unit- 
ed States would think it necessary to express themselves on the 
policy of the recognition is a purely executive question, and that he 
did not think the decision of it constitutionally belongs, not to the 
LTouse of Eepresentatives, nor even to Congress, but to the Presi- 
dent of the United States, to the exclusion of Congress. Had he 
so thought, he would have refused the production of the papers, 
as President Washington did the diplomatic instructions relative 
to the English treaty. 

He would have announced his purpose to recognize the repub- 
lics, and left it to Congress to provide for diplomatic intercourse 
with them. 



460 . JOINT RESOLUTION ON MEXICAN AFFAIRS. 

Far from that, lie proposes for their consideration the policy of 
recognition ; and, if they concur in that, asks them to make the 
necessary appropriations to carry it into effect. 

He consulted the icill of the nation at the mouth of Congress, 
and proposed to concur in its execution. 

So Congress understood him, for the papers and message were 
referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs. ' That committee 
considered, in an elaborate report, the question of independence 
of the republics, the policy and principles involved in their recog- 
nition, and on the 19th of March, 1822, they submitted it to the 
House. It concluded as follows : 

" Your committee, having thus considered the subject referred to them in all its 
aspects, are unanimously of opinion that it is just and expedient to acknowledge the 
independence of the several nations of Spanish America without any reference to the 
diversity in the form of their governments ; and in accordance with this opinion 
they respectfully submit the following resolutions : 

"Resolved, That the House of Representatives concur in the opinion expressed 
by the President in his message of the 8th of March, 1S22, that the American prov- 
inces of Spain which have declared their independence, and are in the enjoyment 
of it, ought to be recognized by the United States as independent nations. 

" Resolved, That the Committee of Ways and Means be instructed to report a bill 
appropriating a sum not exceeding $100,000 to enable the President to give due ef- 
fect to such recognition." 

It is therefore equally apparent that the House of Representa- 
tives of the 17th Congress was clearly of opinion with President 
Monroe that the question of recognition was not purely execu- 
tive, but that it constitutionally belongs to Congress as well as to 
the President ; that the Legislature declares the will of the United 
States, which the executive gives effect to, each concurring in 
the act of recognition according to their respective constitutional 
functions. 

In obedience to that resolution, the following bill, recognizing 
the new nation, was reported, and passed, and approved on the 
•4th of May, 1822 : 

"That for such missions to the independent nations on the American continent as 
the President may deem proper, there be, and hereby is, appropriated a sum not ex- 
ceeding $100,000, to be paid out of any money in the treasury not otherwise appro- 
priated." 

The approval of that law completed the recognition of the new 
nations. The sending ministers to some or all of them was mat- 
ter of executive discretion, not at all essential to or connected 



JOINT RESOLUTION ON MEXICAN AFFAIRS. 461 

with the fact of recognition. Ministers were appointed to Mex- 
ico, Colombia, Buenos Ayres, and Chili, on the 27th of January, 
1823. None was appointed to Peru till May, 1826 ; yet it is cer- 
tain Peru was as much recognized by the United States as the 
other governments from the 4th of May, 1822. 

This great precedent has governed all that follow it. 

The acknowledgment of the independence of Texas stands next 
in our history. It is a most instructive precedent, strictly follow- 
ing the forms respecting the governments of Spanish America. 

On the 18th of June, 1836, on the motion of Henry Clay, the 
Senate adopted the resolution 

"That the independence of Texas ought to be acknowledged by the United 
States whenever satisfactory information shall be received that it has in successful 
operation a civil government capable of performing the duties and fulfilling the ob- 
ligations of an independent power." 

The House of Eepresentatives, on the 4th of July, 1836, adopt- 
ed a resolution in the same words ; and added a second : 

" That the House of Eepresentatives perceive with satisfaction that the President 
of the United States has adopted measures to ascertain the political, military, and 
civil condition of Texas." — Congressional Globe, 1st session 24th Congress, p. 453, 
4SG. 

Those resolutions were not formal acknowledgments of a gov- 
ernment of Texas ; the report of the Senate committee showed 
the circumstances were not sufficiently known ; and both Senate 
and House awaited farther information at the hands of the Presi- 
dent. 

On the 2d of December, while communicating the information, 
President Jackson accepted the occasion to express to Congress 
his opinion on the subject. The following passages are very in- 
structive, touching the authority to recognize new States : 

"Nor has any deliberative inquiry ever been instituted in Congress, or in any of 
our legislative bodies, as to whom belonged the power of recognizing a new State; 
a power, the exercise of which is equivalent, under some circumstances, to a decla- 
ration of war; a power nowhere expressly delegated, and only granted in the Con- 
stitution, as it is necessarily involved in some of the great powers given to Congress, 
in that given to the President and Senate to form treaties and to appoint embassa- 
dors and other public ministers, and in that conferred on the President to receive 
ministers from foreign nations." 

" In the preamble to the resolution of the House of Representatives, it is distinct- 
ly intimated that the expediency of recognizing the independence of Texas should 
be left to the decision of Congress. In this view, on the ground of expediency, I am 



462 JOINT EESOLUTION ON MEXICAN AFFAIRS. 

disposed to concur ; and do not, therefore, think it necessary to express any opinion 
as to the strict constitutional right of the executive, either apart from, or in con- 
junction with, the Senate over the suhject. It is to be presumed that on no future 
occasion will a dispute arise, as none has heretofore occurred, between the executive and 
Legislature in the exercise of the power of recognition. It will always be considered 
consistent with the spirit of the Constitution, and most safe that it should be exercised, 
.when probably leading to war, with a previous understanding with that body by 
whom war can alone be declared, and by whom all the provisions for sustaining its 
perils niust be furnished. Its submission to Congress, which represents in one of 
its branches the States of this Union, and in the other the people of the United 
States, where there may be reasonable ground to apprehend so grave a consequence, 
would certainly afford the fullest satisfaction to our own country, and a perfect guar- 
antee to all other countries, of the justice and prudence of the measures which 
ought to be adopted." 

After forcibly stating why he thought " we should still stand 
aloof," he closed with the following declaration : 

"Having thus discharged my duty by presenting with simplicity and directness 
the views which, after much reflection, I have been led to take of this important 
subject, I have only to add the expression of my confidence that if Congress should 
differ with me upon it, their judgment will be the result of dispassionate, prudent, 
and wise deliberation ; witli the assurance that, during the short time which I shall 
continue connected with the government, I shall promptly and cordially unite with 
you in such measures as may be deemed best fitted to increase the prosperity and 
perpetuate the peace of our favored country." 

The concurrent resolutions of the Senate and Ilouse of Repre- 
sentatives, and that message of President Jackson, leave no doubt 
that the views which presided over the recognition of the South 
American governments still prevailed, and that the President was 
as far from asserting as Congress from admitting that the recog- 
nition of new nations and the foreign policy of the United States 
is a purely executive question. 

The independence of Texas was finally recognized in pursu- 
ance of the following enactment in the Appropriation Bill of the 
second session of the Twenty-fourth Congress, which appropriated 
money 

" For the outfit and salary of a diplomatic agent to be sent to the Republic of 
Texas whenever the President of the United States may receive satisfactory evi- 
dence that Texas is an independent power, and shall deem it expedient to appoint 
such minister." — 5 Statutes, 170. 

That law was approved by President Jackson. 
Not only is this exclusive assumption without countenance in 
the early history of the republic, but it is irreconcilable with the 



JOINT RESOLUTION ON MEXICAN AFFAIRS. 4(53 

most solemn acts of the present administration. The independ- 
ence of Hayti is nearly as old as that of the United States ; it an- 
tedated that of the South American republics, and the republic 
of Liberia has long been recognized by European nations. Both 
were first recognized by act of Congress, approved by President 
Lincoln on the 5th of July, 1862, which enacted 

"That the President of the United States be, and he is hereby authorized, by and 
with the advice and consent of the Senate, to appoint diplomatic representatives of 
the United States to the republics of Hayti and Liberia respectively. Each of the 
representatives so appointed shall be accredited as commissioner and consul gener- 
al, and shall receive the compensation of commissioners," etc., etc. 

That was a formal recognition of those republics by laiv, 
whether the President sent diplomatic representatives or not. 

Quite in the spirit of these precedents is the well-considered 
language of the Supreme Court : 

"Those questions which respect the rights of a part of a foreign empire which 
asserts and is contending for its independence belong more properly to those who 
can declare what the law shall be, who can place the nation in such a position with 
respect to foreign powers as to their own judgment shall appear wise, to whom are 
intrusted its foreign relations, than to that tribunal whose power as well as duty 
is confined to the application of the rule which the Legislature may prescribe for 
it." 

But the joint resolution of the 4th of April does more than de- 
clare the refusal of the United States to recognize a monarchical 
usurpation in Mexico. It declares a general rule of policy, which 
can be authentically and authoritatively expressed only by the 
body charged with the legislative power of the United States. 

"Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of 
America, in Congress asscmbled,That the Congress of the United States are unwill- 
ing, by silence, to leave the nations of the world under the impression that they are 
indifferent spectators of the deplorable events now transpiring in the Republic of 
Mexico; and they therefore think fit to declare that it does not accord with the 
policy of the United States to acknowledge a monarchical government erected on 
the ruins of any republican government in America under" the auspices of any Eu- 
ropean power." 

The committee are of opinion that this authority, to speak in 
the name of the United States, has never, before the correspond- 
ence in question, been considered a purely executive function. 

The most remarkable declaration of this kind in our history, 
which events seem now likely to make of as grave practical inter- 



464 JOINT RESOLUTION ON MEXICAN AFFAIRS. 

est as when it was uttered, is President Monroe's declaration in 
his message of the 2d of December, 1823 : 

" With the governments which have declared their independence and maintained 
it, and whose independence we have, after great consideration and on just princi- 
ples, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition, for the purpose of oppress- 
ing them or controlling in any other manner their destiny by any European power, 
.in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the 
United States." 

But, though always the accurate expression of the feelings of 
the American people, it was not regarded as the settled policy of 
the nation, because not formally declared by Congress. By the 
administration of President John Quincy Adams, which followed, 
it was treated as merely an executive expression on behalf of the 
people, which Congress alone could elevate to the dignity of a 
national policy by its formal adoption. 

In 1826, Mr. Poinsett, the minister to Mexico, having used lan- 
guage supposed to commit the United States to that policy in be- 
half of Mexico, a resolution was promptly introduced into the 
House of Eepresentatives and adopted on the 27th of March, 
1826, 

" That the Committee on Foreign Affairs inquire and report to this House upon 
what authority, if any, the minister of the United States to the Mexican Republic, 
in his official character, declared to the plenipotentiary of that government that the 
United States have pledged themselves not to permit any other power than Spain to 
interfere either with their (the South American republics) independence or form of 
government," etc., etc.— 2 Cong. Deb., 19th Con., 1st sess., p. 1820. 

Mr. Poinsett hastened to explain by his letter of the 6th of 
May, 1826, to Henry Clay, then Secretary of State : 

"I can not rest satisfied without stating explicitly that, in the observations I 
made during my conference with the Mexican plenipotentiaries, I alluded only to 
the message of the President of the United States to Congress in 1823. 

"That message, declared, in my opinion, by the soundest policy, has been re- 
garded both in Europe and America as a solemn declaration of the views and inten- 
tions of the executive of the United States, and I have always considered that decla- 
ration as a pledge, so far forth as the language of the President can pledge the na- 
tion, to defend the new American republics from the attacks of any of the powers 
of Europe other than Spain. That the people of the United States are not bound by 
any declarations of the executive is known and understood as well in Mexico, where the 
government is modeled on our own political institutions, as in the United States them- 
selves. But, in order to correct any erroneous impressions these words might have 
made on the minds of the Mexican plenipotentiaries, I explained to them, in the 
course of our conference this morning, their precise meaning : that the declaration 



JOINT RESOLUTION ON MEXICAN AFFAIRS. 465 

of Mr. Monroe in his message of 1823, to which I had alluded, indicated only the 
course of policy the executive of the United States was disposed to pursue toward 
these countries, but ivas not binding on the nation unless sanctioned by the Congress of 
the United States ; and when I spoke of the United States having pledged themselves 
not to permit any other power than Spain to interfere with the independence or form 
of government of the American republics, I meant only to allude to the above-cited 
declaration of the President of the United States in his message of 1S23, and to 
nothing more." 

This explanation is the more significant from the fact that Mr. 
Clay's instructions to Mr. Poinsett directed him to bring to the 
notice of the Mexican government the message of the late Presi- 
dent of the United States to their Congress on the 2d of Decem- 
ber, 1823, asserting certain important principles of intercontinental 
law in the relations of Europe and America ; and, after stating 
and enlarging on them, Mr. Clay proceeds : 

"Both principles were laid down after much and anxious deliberation on the 
part of the late administration. The President, who then formed a part of it, contin- 
ues entirely to coincide in both, and you will urge upon the government of Mexico the 
propriety and expediency of asserting the same principles on all proper occasions." 

And in reply to the resolution of inquiry of the 27th of March, 
Mr. Clay accompanied his instructions with the declaration — en- 
tirely in the spirit of Mr. Poinsett's letter — 

" that the United States have contracted no engagement, nor made any pledge to the 
governments of Mexico and South America, or either of them, that the United States 
would not permit the interference of any foreign power with the independence or 
form of government of those nations. ******* 

" If, indeed, an attempt by force had been made by allied Europe to subvert the 
liberties of the southern nations on this continent, and to erect upon the ruins of their 
free institutions monarchical systems, the people of the United States would have 
stood pledged, in the opinion of the executive, not to any foreign State, but to them- 
selves and their posterity, by their dearest interests and highest duties, to resist to 
the utmost such attempt ; and it is to a pledge of that character that Mr. Poinsett 
above refers." — 2 Cong. Debates, 19th Congress, 1st session, App. 83, 84. 

Such were the views of the administration of President John 
Quincy Adams, whose Secretary of State was Henry Clay, and 
whose minister to Mexico was Mr. Poinsett, upon the supremacy 
of the Legislature in declaring the foreign policy of the United 
States, the diplomatic execution and conduct of which is confided 
to the President. 

It is impossible to condense the elaborate message of President 
Adams of the 15th of March, 1826, dedicated to persuading Con- 
gress to concur in and sanction the Panama mission ; but that 

G G 



466 JOINT KESOLUTION ON MEXICAN AFFAIRS. 

message, and the great debate which consumed the session in both 
houses, are unmeaning on the assumptions of this correspondence 
with the French government ; and the consideration and approval 
of its recommendations elevate President Monroe's declaration to 
the dignity and authority of the policy of the nation solemnly and 
legally proclaimed by Congress. 

That message was in reply to a resolution requesting the Pres- 
ident to inform the House of Eepresentatives "in regard to what 
objects the agents of the United States are expected to take part 
in the deliberations of that Congress" — of Panama. 

Among other subjects of deliberation, the President enumerated 
the declaration of President Monroe above quoted, and on that 
topic said : 

" Most of the new American republics have declared their entire assent to them ; 
and they now propose, among the subjects of consideration at Panama, to take into 
consideration the means of making effectual the assertion of that principle, as well 
as the means of resisting interference from abroad with the domestic concerns of the 
American governments. 

"In alluding to these means, it would obviously be premature at this time to an- 
ticipate that which is offered merely as matter for consultation, or to pronounce upon 
those measures which have been or may be suggested. The purpose of this govern- 
ment is to concur in none which would import hostility to Europe, or justly excite 
resentment in any of her States. Should it be deemed advisable to contract any 
conventional engagement on this topic, our views would extend no farther than to 
a mutual pledge of the parties to the compact, to maintain the principle in applica- 
tion to its own territory, and to permit no colonial lodgments or establishments of 
European jurisdiction upon its own soil ; and with respect to the obtrusive interfer- 
ence from abroad, if the future character may be inferred from that which has been, 
and perhaps still is, exercised in more than one of the new States, a joint declara- 
tion of its character and exposure of it to the world would be probably all that the 
occasion would require. 

l ' Whether the United States should or should not be parties to such a declara- 
tion may justly form a part of the deliberation. That there is an evil to be reme- 
died needs little insight into the secret history of late years to know, and that this 
remedy may best be considered at the Panama meeting deserves at least the exper- 
iment of consideration." 

Upon this message, after elaborate debates, Congress passed in 
May an appropriation "for carrying into effect the appointment 
of a mission to the Congress of Panama;" and the President, by 
and with the advice and consent of the Senate, appointed minis- 
ters to that Congress, and furnished them with instructions in con- 
formity with the message, and in execution of the policy approved 
by Congress. 



JOINT RESOLUTION ON MEXICAN AFFAIRS. 46 ( 7 

Accident and delays prevented the arrival of our mission before 
the dissolution of the Congress ; but President Adams thought 
the gravity of the precedent justified him in communicating to 
Congress, in 1829, Mr. Clay's instructions to the ministers for our 
information ; and the precedent remains forever to vindicate the 
authority of Congress to declare and present the foreign policy of 
the United States. 

The great name of Daniel Webster is justly considered author- 
itative on any question of constitutional power ; and in that de- 
bate, when the enemies of the administration strove to insert par- 
ticular instructions to the diplomatic agents sent to that Congress, 
he clearly defined the limits of executive and congressional au- 
thority in declaring the policy and conducting the negotiations to 
effectuate it. 

On the 4th of April, 1826, he is reported to have said in the 
House of Representatives : 

" He would ask two questions : First, Does not the Constitution vest the power 
of the executive in the President ? Second, Is not the giving of instructions to 
ministers ahroad an exercise of executive power ? Why should we take this respons- 
ibility on ourselves ? He denied that the President had devolved, or could devolve, 
his own constitutional responsibility, or any part of it, on this House. The Presi- 
dent had sent this subject to the House for its concurrence by voting the necessary 
appropriation. Beyond this the House was not called on to act. We might refuse 
the appropriation if we saw fit, but we had not the power to make our vote condi- 
tional, and to attach instructions to it. 

" There was a way, indeed, in which this House might express its opinion in re- 
gard to foreign politics. That is by resolution. He agreed entirely with the gen- 
tleman that, if the House were of opinion that a wrong course was given to our for- 
eign relations, it ought to say so, and say so by some measure that should affect the 
whole, and not a part, of our diplomatic intercourse. It ought to control all mis- 
sions, and not one only. 

"There was no reason why the ministers to Panama should act under these re- 
strictions that did not equally apply to other diplomatic agents — for example, to 
our minister at Colombia, Mexico, or other new States. A resolution expressive of 
the sense of the House would, on the contrary, lead to instructions to be given to 
them all. A resolution was, therefore, the regular mode of proceeding. We saw, 
for instance, looking at these documents, that our government had declared to some 
of the governments of Europe, perhaps it has declared to all the principal powers, 
that we could not consent to the transfer of Cuba to any European power. No 
doubt the executive government can maintain that ground only so long as it re- 
ceives the approbation and support of Congress. If Congress be of opinion that 
this course of policy is wrong, then he agreed it was in the power, and, he thought, 
indeed, the duty of Congress to interfere and to express dissent. If the amendment 



468 JOINT EESOLUTION ON MEXICAN AFFAIRS. 

now offered prevailed, the declarations so distinctly made on this point could not be 
reported, under any circumstances, at Panama ; but they might, nevertheless, be 
reported any where and every where else. Therefore, if we dissent from this opin"- 
ion, that dissent should be declared by resolution, and that would change the whole 
course of our diplomatic correspondence on that subject in all places. If any gen- 
tleman thinks, therefore, that wc ought to take no measure, under any circum- 
stances, to prevent the transfer of Cuba into the hands of any government, European 
or American, let him bring forward his resolution to that effect. If it should pass, 
it will effectually prevent the repetition of such declarations as have been made." — 
2 Cong. Debates, 19th Congress, 1st session, p. 2021, 2022. 

This view is, in the opinion of the committee, at once the just 
view and the traditional practice of the government ; the will of 
the people expressed in legislative form by the legislative power 
can declare authoritatively the foreign policy of the nation ; to the 
President is committed the diplomatic measures for effecting it. 

The constitutional authority of Congress over the foreign rela- 
tions of the United States can hardly be considered an open ques- 
tion, after the concurrent resolutions of Mr. Senator Sumner, adopt- 
ed in the last Congress, it is believed, at the suggestion, certainly 
with the approval of the President, and by him officially notified 
to 'foreign governments, as the most authentic and authoritative 
expression of the national will respecting intervention, mediation, 
and every other form of foreign intrusion into the domestic strug- 
gle in the United States. 

The committee are not inclined to discuss theoretical questions 
of relative power. The Constitution is a practical, and not a the- 
oretical instrument. It has been administered and construed by 
men of practical sagacity, and in their hands the voice of the peo- 
ple has been heard authoritatively in the executive chamber on 
the conduct of foreign affairs. 

But this correspondence requires us to say that, in view of the 
historic precedents, it is not a purely executive question whether 
the United States would think it necessary to express themselves 
in the form adopted by the House of Representatives at this time ; 
it does belong to Congress to declare and decide on the foreign 
policy of the United States, and it is the duty of the President to 
give effect to that policy by means of the diplomatic negotiations, 
or military power if it be authorized. 

The President is not less bound to execute the national will ex- 
pressed by law in its foreign than in its domestic concerns. 

The President appoints all officers of the United States, but 



JOINT RESOLUTION ON MEXICAN AFFAIRS. 459 

their duties are regulated, not by his will, but by law. He is the 
commander of the army and navy, but he has no power to use it 
except when the law points out the occasion and the object. He 
appoints foreign ministers, but neither in this case are they, by 
reason of their appointment, any thing but the ministers of the 
law. If it be true that the appointment of an embassador to a 
nation implies the recognition of the -nation, it is just as sound 
logic to argue that none can be appointed to a nation that does 
not exist by the recognition of Congress, as that the President 
can recognize alone, because he can appoint. 

But we prefer to waive the question. We are anxious not to 
depart from the approved precedents of our history. Our desire 
is to preserve, not to change. We will not inquire what would 
be the effect of a recognition of a new nation by the President 
against the will of Congress. We prefer to indulge the hope, so 
wisely expressed by President Jackson, that 

"it is to be presumed that on no future occasion will a dispute arise, as none has 
heretofore occurred, between the executive and Legislature in the exercise of the 
power of recognition.'' 

Hifherto new nations, new powers, have always been recognized 
upon consultation and concurrence of the executive and legisla- 
tive departments, and on the most important occasions by and in 
pursuance of law in the particular cases. 

Changes of the person or dynasty of rulers of recognized pow- 
ers, which created no new power, have not been treated always 
with the same formality ; but usually the general law providing 
for diplomatic intercourse with the power whose internal admin- 
istration had changed remained on the statute-book and conferred 
a plenary discretion on the President, under the sanction of which 
he has accredited ministers to the new possessors of power. It is 
not known that hitherto the President has ever undertaken to 
recognize a new nation or a new power not before known to the 
history of the world, and not before acknowledged by the United 
States, without the previous authority of Congress. 

It is peculiarly unfortunate that the new view of the executive 
authority should have been announcedto a foreign government, 
the tendency of which was to diminish the force and effect of the 
legislative expression of what is admitted to be the unanimous 
sentiment of the people of the United States, by denying the au- 
thority of Congress to pronounce it. 



470 JOINT RESOLUTION ON MEXICAN AFFAIRS. 

Of the prudence of that expression at this time Congress is the 
best and only judge under the forms of the Constitution, and the 
President has no right to influence it otherwise than in the con- 
stitutional expression of his assent or his dissent when presented 
to him for his consideration. 

It is vain to suppose that such a declaration increases the dan- 
ger of war with France. The Emperor of the French will make 
war on the United States when it suits his convenience, and it can 
be done without danger to his dynastic interests. Till then, in 
the absence of wrong or insult on our part, there will be no war. 
When that time arrives we shall have war, no matter how meek, 
inoffensive, or pusillanimous our conduct may be, for our sin is 
our freedom and our power, and the only safety of monarchical, 
imperial, aristocratic, or despotic rule lies in our failure or our 
overthrow. 

It postpones the inevitable day to be ready and powerful at 
home, and to express our resolution not to recognize acts of vio- 
lence to republican neighbors on our borders perpetrated to our 
injury. That declaration will encourage the republicans of Amer- 
ica to resist and endure, and not to submit. It is not perc'eived 
how an attack on the United States can promote the establish- 
ment of a monarch in Mexico. It might seriously injure us, but 
it would be an additional obstacle to the accomplishment of that 
enterprise. It is fortunate that events in Europe in great measure 
embarrass any farther warlike enterprise on this continent, and 
the ruler who has not thought fit to mingle in the strife of Poland 
or Schleswig-Holstein will hardly venture to provoke a war with 
the United States. 

The committee are content to bide their time, confident in the 
fortune and fortitude of the American people, but resolved not to 
encourage by a weak silence complications with foreign powers 
inimical to our greatness and safety, which, in the words of Mr. 
Webster, " a firm and timely assertion of what we hold to be our 
own rights and our own interests would strongly tend to avert." 
The committee recommend the adoption of the following reso- 
lution : 

"Resolved, That Congress has a constitutional right to an authoritative voice in 
declaring and prescribing the foreign policy of the United States, as well in the rec- 
ognition of new powers as in other matters ; and it is the constitutional duty of the 
President to respect that policy, not less in diplomatic negotiations than in the use 



JOINT RESOLUTION ON MEXICAN AFFAIRS. 471 

of the national force when authorized by law ; and the propriety of any declaration 
of foreign policy by Congress is sufficiently proved by the vote which pronounces it ; 
and such proposition, while pending and undetermined, is not a fit topic of diplo- 
matic explanation with any foreign power." 

Mr. Davis demanded the previous question upon the passage of the 
foregoing resolution, which was seconded, and the main question ordered. 
The adoption of the resolution by the House would of course have been 
equivalent to a public censure of the conduct of foreign affairs by the 
Secretary of State, under the direction of the President. It would have 
implied that the management of those affairs in relation to the French 
interference in Mexico, and the course adopted by the Secretary of State, 
were, in the opinion of the House, improper, and too obsequious toward 
the Emperor of the French. To avoid a rejection of the resolution re- 
ported by the committee, and the expression of any such censure which 
the House was not prepared to make, a motion to lay the resolution on 
the table was adopted. 

Mr. Davis thought that in this difference of opinion on the part of the 
majority of the House was involved the propriety of his continuing as 
Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and, immediately upon 
the adoption of the motion laying the resolution on the table, he asked 
the House to excuse his farther service on that committee in the follow- 
ing speech : 



FOREIGN POLICY OF THE UNITED STATES 
IN REGARD TO MEXICAN AFFAIRS (1864).* 

Mr. Speaker, — I rise to a privileged question. I desire to be 
relieved by the House from farther service on the Committee for 
Foreign Affairs. I am willing, sir, to take all of the responsi- 
bilities that are connected with any service upon which the House 
of Eepresentatives shall place me ; but when, in the course of the 
discharge of those duties, I find myself unfortunately differing in 
opinion from the majority of the House, I do not consider it is 
proper I should longer continue to hold any such position. The 
vote which has been just passed by the House is one which will 
allow of no other construction. 

The House, on my motion, on the unanimous recommendation 
of the Committee on Foreign Affairs at the last session, passed a 
resolution declaring the policy of this government touching the 
republics of America. It was adopted unanimously. It went to 
the Senate, and there it lies. It had not been passed three days 
before the officer charged with the foreign correspondence of this 
government directed our representatives abroad virtually to apol- 
ogize to the French government for the resolution adopted by the 
representatives of the people, and in that correspondence pre- 
sumed to impeach Congress of usurpation in undertaking to pre- 
scribe to the President the rules which should guide him in the 
foreign policy of the United States. 

That correspondence was made the subject of a circular by the 
French government, and to all of the governments of the world, 
to let them understand that the Congress of the United States 
had no right to speak with authority in the foreign affairs of the 
government, and that nothing was to be regarded except the will 
and declarations of the executive. In the debates that took place 
in the French Assembly, the world was given to understand, by 
the member representing the emperor, that the passage of the 
resolution touching Mexican affairs and the French intrusion into 
Mexico was a momentary outburst of passion on the part of the 

* See note on preceding page. 



FOREIGN POLICY OF THE UNITED STATES, ETC. 473 

representatives of the American people, like that which occur- 
red when Messrs. Mason and Slidell were arrested on board the 
Trent, but which did not prevent the federal government from 
giving up the two prisoners. The world was given to under- 
stand, on the authority of the Secretary of State, by the imperial 
government, that Congress is such a thing as the French Assem- 
bly — the docile reflex of the executive will — its resolution a vain 
and presumptuous usurpation. The letter of the Secretary of State 
was in a tone that was not respectful to the dignity and the au- 
thority of the House of Eepresentatives. And if that letter lays 
down the law of the land — and this House by its vote to-day says 
it does — then you have no right to a committee on foreign af- 
fairs, and I am no child to play at doing that which you have 
no right to do. 

The Secretary of State, before all Europe, in a matter of the 
greatest moment, slapped the House of Eepresentatives in the 
face, in his correspondence with the French government, and the 
House of Representatives says it will not even assert its dignity. 
The House of Representatives is the appropriate and adequate 
guardian of its own dignity. 

Sir, I am the only guardian of my own dignity, and, after this 
vote and that correspondence, I, most humbly but respectfully, 
ask to be excused from farther service upon the Committee on 
Foreign Affairs. 

Mr. Speaker, I regret that, in the discussion that has taken 
place, several topics have been introduced that were not very in- 
timately connected with the simple and earnest application made 
to the House to relieve me from farther service on the Committee 
on Foreign Affairs. 

It was made in all earnestness and simplicity, from a profound 
sense of duty, and not from any personal feeling of discontent 
with the vote of the House. 

I was not in the least degree ruffled in my temper by the cir- 
cumstance that the House has now, as it has done on so many oc- 
casions, differed from me in judgment. 

I have been brought up in defeats, I have lived in minorities ; 
I always submit, and, I trust, with perfect humility, to the better 
judgment of the House. If any gentleman, in the course of my 
eight years' service in this House, has ever seen any manifestation 
of personal spleen or personal disappointment, then may the ob- 



474 FOREIGN POLICY OF THE UNITED STATES 

servations of the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Dawes] be 
justified. If no man has on any occasion seen that, then I shall 
be pardoned for taking no farther notice of the mean malice that 
prompted them. 

But I do not wish to be misunderstood upon another point. It 
has been repeatedly stated that this resolution assails the Presi- 
dent. Well, sir, I am ready to assail the President, or any body 
else, who stands across the broad track of republican principles. 
I need not say that in this House, and yet, sir, there is no word 
in that resolution which assails the President, nor was it contem- 
plated to assail him. It was carefully, deliberately, critically pre- 
pared, and received the approval of every member of the Com- 
mittee on Foreign Affairs, with the dissenting voice alone of the 
gentleman from New York [Mr. Pomeroy]. 

I beg the attention of the House to the language of the resolu- 
tion. The rights that it asserts I do not now pretend to debate. 
The j udgment of the House has been rendered, to which I shall 
bow, and bow without argument. The resolution was not a cob- 
web of my brain, brought there to hang fine dissertations upon 
about the abstract rights of different departments of the govern- 
ment. This House has asserted its authority in matters of the 
gravest national importance — events which had arrested the at- 
tention of the civilized world, and made anxious the heart of ev- 
ery friend of liberty in it. A free nation on our borders lay 
bleeding in the talons of the French eagle, and a vagrant adven- 
turer, who had never seen the soil of Mexico, called himself her 
emperor. The American House of Eepresentatives had declared 
that it did not accord with our policy to recognize any monarch- 
ical government erected on the ruins of any republican govern- 
ment in America, least of allr in Mexico, our neighbor and our 
friend. It did not relate to remote or possible contingencies, but 
to a bloody, awful reality— the ruin of a free nation by European 
violence, under false pretexts, and with an insolent hostility to 
our power ; a ruin now more nearly consummated, and by our 
fault — ay, and still more by the fault of those charged with the 
conduct of our diplomatic intercourse. But that resolution had 
rested in the Senate. We had done all that we could, and we 
were obliged to rest in silence. 

But when the Secretary of State of the United States sent 
abroad a dispatch to a foreign government relative to a matter 



IN REGARD TO MEXICAN AFFAIRS (1864). 475 

then pending within the legislative department of the United 
States, where the executive eye has no right to penetrate, respect- 
ing the vote on which, until communicated to him in the regular 
form, he has no right to know any thing— when at that stage the 
Secretary of State saw fit to enter into diplomatic communication 
with a foreign government, in order to rob the vote of tnis House 
of its legitimate and moral power before it had acquired any leg- 
islative authority, and, in doing that, not only questioned the wis- 
dom and expediency but the right of this House, and of both 
houses, to say one word upon the subject, I could not sit in si- 
lence ; and the House will find, I think, that they will be unable 
to do so, if they have a due regard to their dignity as one of the 
branches of the government. 

And it was in deference to that practical, actual case, that the 
resolution was drawn — drawn carefully, drawn critically, drawn 
with a studious avoidance of every innuendo against the personal 
character either of the President of the United States or of the 
distinguished gentleman who presides so ably over the Depart- 
ment of State ; and the language of his letter, to which the lan- 
guage of the resolution refers, will show how carefully it was 
adapted to this object, and how completely it accomplished it. 
The Secretary of State says : 

"It is, however, another ami a distinct question whether the United States would 
think it necessary or proper to express themselves in the form adopted by the House 
of Representatives at this time." 

If it be another question whether the United States would 
think proper to express themselves at this time, and in the form 
that the House of Representatives have seen fit to use, who speaks 
for the United States ? 

The Secretary says : • 

" This is a practical and purely executive question." 

Here the executive speaks for the United States : 

"And the decision of it constitutionally belongs not to the House of Represent- 
atives, nor even to Congress, but to the President of the United States." 

Then the President is the United States ! Do gentlemen now 
understand how the word "President" came there? It was be- 
cause the Secretary of State had told the French government, 
with a view to break the force of the vote of the House of Repre- 
sentatives, that it belonged not to the House of Representatives 
nor to Congress, but exclusively to the President of the United 



476 FOREIGN POLICY OF THE UNITED STATES 

States to declare what the United States thought, and when it was 
expedient to declare what it thought in reference to our foreign 
affairs ; and foreign affairs mean war, and peace, and alliances, 
and recognitions, and neutrality, and every interest and every 
right by which we touch the nations of the world ; and that in 
the face of the formal words of the Constitution ascribing those 
"functions, in whole or in part, to one or both houses of Congress. 

It was that declaration, in conflict with all the precedents of the 
United States, that the Secretary of State saw fit merely to ex- 
press here in the ordinary intercourse between the departments 
of the government, but to send abroad to our minister in France 
and lay before a foreign government, and to impeach and dis- 
credit the judgment of Congress before it has pronounced, which 
imperatively required to be rebuked. 

And it was at that language that the resolution was pointed. 
Now judge ye whether it be true or not that Congress has a con- 
stitutional right to an authoritative voice in our foreign affairs. 
That raises the issue directly, does it not, with the language, not 
with the person of the Secretary of State, whether " Congress has 
a constitutional right to an authoritative voice in declaring and 
prescribing the foreign policy of the United States, as well in the 
recognition of new powers as in others matters ; and it is the con- 
stitutional duty of the President to respect that policy, not less in 
matters of negotiation than in the use of the national force when 
authorized?" 

It was no blow aimed at the President. But a right had been 
asserted for the President by the Secretary of State. He first im- 
peached the right of Congress to do what it has always done, and 
usurped its right for one of the flowers of the presidential prerog- 
ative. I deny his law and his fact. I make the question of right 
and not of person, either with the Secretary or with the Presi- 
dent. 

"And then whether the United States would think it necessary or proper to 
express themselves in the form adopted by the House of Representatives" — 

the Secretary tells the world is an executive question ! We can 
not allow our votes to be received other than in a constitutional 
form of a veto by the President ; then he has the right to approve, 
or refuse to approve, them in the forms of his constitutional au- 
thority. 

But I have yet to learn that it is the right of the President to 






IN REGARD TO MEXICAN AFFAIRS (1864). 477 

say what is necessary or proper, or what is wise and what is un- 
wise, with reference to any vote of this House, or of both houses 
of Congress, except when our votes are communicated for his ap- 
proval ; therefore, to make the issue direct with the other portion 
of the Secretary's letter, this clause is introduced : 

" And the propriety of any declaration of foreign policy by Congress is sufficient- 
ly proved by the vote which pronounces it." 

That is the assertion that our vote is not the subject of execu- 
tive criticism ; that it is the right of the people of the United 
States to say what they will upon the foreign policy, and it is 
the duty of the President to veto or obey it. But, sir, if Congress 
have sunk so low that it must look beyond the limits of its own 
halls to vindicate the necessity and propriety of this solemn dec- 
laration of national policy at this time -in the. form we adopted, 
perhaps we can find no arbiter between us and the executive gov- 
ernment which it will recognize so readily as the Baltimore Con- 
vention ; and that body, forced by public opinion, thought it nec- 
essary and proper to echo the resolution for which the Secretary 
apologized — only, attempting to give a rebuke the form of a com- 
pliment, they converted it into a sarcasm. 

That is the substance of the resolution. Now, sir, I say again 
that I do not mean to debate the policy of the resolution, or any 
matter connected with it. Nobody except the gentleman from 
Maine [Mr. Blaine] has impeached it here upon historical grounds. 
With great respect to that gentleman, I say that the precedent 
which he quotes is frivolously irrelevant ; and that, from the be- 
ginning of the government until this day, there is no vote of ei- 
ther house of Congress, there is no claim by any President of the 
United States, there is no expression by any respectable public 
man of any party, that it does not belong to the Congress of the 
United States to declare and prescribe the foreign policy of the 
United States ; and from the time of the Panama mission, when 
John Quincy Adams asked and obtained the authority and sup- 
port of Congress for that great mission which we must soon re- 
peat, until this day we have vote on vote of Congress, under al- 
most every administration, affirming, implying, asserting, or exert- 
ing that prerogative, without question from any quarter; and un- 
der this, administration more than one act, approved by President 
Lincoln himself, to add to the unbroken law of precedents. 

The recognition of Hayti and Liberia was not the spontaneous 



478 EOKEIGN TOLICY OF THE UNITED STATES 

act of the President ; but he, like his predecessors, waited till Con- 
gress had authorized him to open with them international rela- 
tions. 

Sir, there is but one judgment and one course of precedent 
from the beginning to the end of American history. Monroe 
concurred in it. The messages of John Quincy Adams are re- 
plete with it. General Jackson, in the case of Texas, recognized 
it. Mr. Clay asserted it. Mr. Webster asserted it. What other 
authorities are worthy of notice after we have named these? 
That, sir, is all I have to say on the subject. 

Now, sir, one other word. I have said that, in asking to be ex- 
cused from farther service on the Committee on Foreign Affairs, 
I act from no feeling of personal pique. I make that request 
from a sense of public duty, in view of the relations that the chair- 
man of the committee necessarily bears to the House of Eepre- 
sentatives. It is possible, sir, for the House to differ on many oc- 
casions, not only with the chairman, but with the committee. 
They are bound to take the instructions of the House ; they are 
bound to conform to such instructions; they are bound by the 
judgment of the House, and they must act in conformity with it. 

But the position of chairman of a committee means that he 
stands there as the representative of the political views of the ma- 
jority of the House of Representatives. He is to the House what 
a member of the cabinet is to the President. An absolute con- 
formity on all essential principles between the chairman of a com- 
mittee and the House on a subject respecting which the commit- 
tee is raised, is essential to a due discharge of his duties, just as a 
similar relation between a cabinet officer and the President is es- 
sential to the due conduct of executive affairs. / am not the rep- 
resentative of the House upon this question. The vote of this morn- 
ing places a great gulf between me and the House of Representa- 
tives. I cheerfully admit that I may be wrong and they may 
be right, but the criterion of my conduct must be my own judg- 
ment, and I can not separate myself from the history of America 
to conform to the vote of the House of Representatives. 

And, sir, I go a step farther ; not only is it impossible that I 
should continue to represent the House in that responsible situa- 
tion without misrepresenting myself, but, insignificant as I may 
be personally, I am unwilling, when this matter crosses the ocean, 
as it will cross it, I can not consent to seem to submit, or to ac- 



IN REGARD TO MEXICAN AFFAIRS (1864.) 479 

quiesce in, or have part or lot with this grave surrender of the 
power of the people ; for, Mr. Speaker, whatever the insignificance 
of the person who moves this question, his connection with this 
vote elevates him to its importance ; and I will tell you there is 
more than one crowned head in Europe that now looks anxiously 
to the conduct of this House upon this very question, and a shout 
will go up from one end of despotic Europe to the other when it 
is known that the House of Eepresentatives has confessed that its 
resolves are vain breath before the dictation of the President, and 
that the President is the United States, as Louis Napoleon is 
France. 

Insignificant though! be, I am not humble enough to allow my 
name to be associated with that humiliating abdication. 

"With all kindness to the gentlemen who have so -kindly ex- 
pressed themselves here to-day — a kindness which overwhelms 
me sensibly, a kindness frequently expressed heretofore in pri- 
vate, but never before so publicly — I beg they will not let that 
kindly feeling enter into consideration on this vote, but will do 
as I ask them — simply relieve me from acting longer in this re- 
sponsible position where I so gravely misrepresent the House 
which has honored me. 



ADMINISTRATION OF THE NAVY DEPAET- 
MENT.— MONITORS AND ARMORED SHIPS. 

On the 3d and Gth of February the House resumed the consideration 
of the Naval Appropriation Bills. Mr. Davis had on previous occa- 
sions expressed his dissatisfaction with the management of the Navy 
Department, not only in regard to its conduct toward and disposition of 
officers, but particularly respecting the expenditures for monitors and 
iron-clad ships. On this occasion he expressed his views at length on 
those points in the following speeches : 

The House resolved itself into the Committee of the Whole on the State of the 
Union (Mr. Washhurne, of Illinois, in the chair), and resumed the consideration of 
the hill (House of Kep., No. G7C) making appropriations for the naval service for 
the year ending June 30, 1SGG, the pending question heing the amendment submit- 
ted by Mr. Davis, of Maryland, to add to the bill the following : 

Provided, That no money appropriated for the naval service shall be expended 
otherwise than in accordance with the following provision, so far as it is applicable; 
that is to say, that the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, 
shall appoint a Board of Admiralty, which shall consist of the vice-admiral and one 
rear admiral, one commodore, one captain, one commander, and one lieutenant 
commander, over which the Secretary of the Navy or the officer highest in rank 
present shall preside ; and when the subject under consideration shall appertain to 
the duties of any bureau in the Navy Department, the chief of such bureaix shall be 
a member of the Board, and entitled to sit and vote on the consideration of the 
subject. 

Sec. — And be it further enacted, That the Board shall deliberate in common and 
advise the Secretary on any matters submitted by him relating to naval organization, 
naval legislation, the construction, equipment, and armaments of vessels, navy yards, 
and other naval establishments, and the direction, employment, and disposition of 
the naval forces in time of war. All such opinions shall be recorded. 

Sec. — And be it farther enacted, That no vessel of war shall be built or material- 
ly altered,, nor any guns of new construction ordered or adopted, nor any engine for 
any vessel of war adopted or ordered, npr any permanent structure for naval serv- 
ice executed, until the plans, estimates, proposals, and contracts for the same shall 
have been submitted to the Board, and its opinion and advice thereon communicated 
in writing to the Secretary ; nor shall any patented invention be bought or adopted 
for the naval service without first the opinion of the Board thereon having been 
taken ; and all experiments decided to test inventions, and naval plans and struc- 



ADMININISTRATION OF THE NAVY DEPARTMENT. 481 

tures, shall be conducted under the inspection of the Board, or members thereof 
named by the Secretary, and submitted to the Board for its opinion thereon. 

Sec. — And be it farther enacted, That all invitations for plans or proposals for 
any of the works above mentioned shall be prepared by the Board, subject to the ap- 
proval of the Secretary ; and all bids or offers, or proposals for the same, shall be 
opened in the presence of the Board, and the award made by it, subject to the ap- 
proval of the Secretary. 

Sec. — And be it farther enacted, That the Secretary may add to the Board, from 
time to time, other officers of the navy eligible to the position of chief of bureau, not 
exceeding three at any time, for consultation on any of the above subjects. The 
Board may take the opinion of eminent practical engineers, mechanics, machinists, 
and architects, in their respective branches of art or industry, when in their opinion 
the public service will be promoted by.it, and pay them such reasonable compensa- 
tion as the Secretary may approve. 

Mr. Davis, of Maryland, said : 

Mr. Chairman, — I should have been glad, but for the import- 
ance of this subject, to have allowed the vote to be taken upon 
the amendment -which I have offered without making any obser- 
vations on it; but the condition of the navy, and its great import- 
ance in the adjustment of accounts which we will have to adjust 
with other nations so soon as the rebellion shall be suppressed, 
make it a matter of vital moment that^we should not be deluded 
by any apparent strength, that we should not allow weakness to 
be covered up under great numbers, whether of vessels or of guns, 
nor allow ourselves to be persuaded by articles adroitly inserted 
in newspapers in various portions of the country, into the belief 
that we are a naval power of the first magnitude, till that illusion 
is dispelled by some day of disastrous memory. For these rea- 
sons I desire to offer a few observations in support of the amend- 
ment which I have proposed. 

This amendment is not introduced upon my own judgment, is 
not one hastily drawn and brought before the House to provoke 
a discussion, but it was introduced after great deliberation — not 
deliberation in my own mind, but deliberation in connection with 
the first officers of the navy of the United States, the men who 
must bear our flag, navigate our ships, fight our guns, and main- 
tain the honor of our country with the means we place at their 
disposal. They are the men who tremble at the present condi- 
tion of the navy. 

The honorable gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Spalding], on the 
Naval Committee, was prompt and anxious to thrust aside, un- 

Hh 



482 ADMINISTRATION OF THE NAVY DEPARTMENT. 

considered, this amendment when it was introduced the other day, 
because it was under consideration before the Naval Committee. 
But it is proper to say that the bill was referred to the Naval 
Committee at the last session — not late in the session — three 
months before its close. And if they have not considered it, it is 
because they do not wish a vote upon it, or do not consider it 
' worthy of consideration. I have more than once applied to one 
or two gentlemen upon that committee to take the bill up and 
consider it, and report it, even if they reported unfavorably upon 
it, so that the country might have an opportunity of having the 
judgment of this House and the vote of this House upon that 
measure. 

Perhaps the House will understand why that report is made 
now, when it can be no longer delayed. At an earlier stage, as 
an independent measure, there would have been a chance of hav- 
ing a consideration of the bill. When I saw that there was a pur- 
pose that there should be no consideration of it, I moved it as an 
amendment to the Appropriation Bill. The Naval Committee were 
not then ready to express their judgment upon it. Now that it is 
here, and the House must act upon it, they have suddenly made 
up their opinions — upon what consideration it is for them to say 
— and throw the weight of their judgment against it when it is 
"before the House. Sir, their judgment will, of course, not have 
the weight and consideration of a committee, but that they have 
deliberated for nearly a year without deciding on it looks as 
though their opinion were given now for the purpose of accom- 
plishing what they did not accomplish by smothering the bill. 

There are, I agree, grave objections to incorporating important 
measures in the appropriation bills. But, before this amendment 
was moved, the House, by an almost unanimous vote, had greatly 
changed the organization of the navy by increasing largely the 
number of cadets allowed at the Naval Academy. And the ob- 
jection urged to incorporating this amendment upon the Appro- 
priation Bill struck me as very remarkable, when an amendment 
of that kind had already been adopted within half an hour before 
I made my motion, on the motion of the honorable gentleman now 
in the chair [Mr. "Washburne, of Illinois], amended and enlarged 
upon the motion of the chairman of the Committee on Ways and 
Means [Mr. Stevens] ; so that there are circumstances in which 
grave and important measures may with propriety be put into an 



MONITORS AND ARMORED SHIPS. 483 

Appropriation Bill ; and while that precedent fully justifies this 
amendment in point of parliamentary law, there is an additional 
consideration why this should be incorporated here. The decla- 
ration of the gentleman from the Committee on Naval Affairs suf- 
ficiently shows that this measure does not meet with favor at the 
other end of the avenue ; that the people whose hands are to be 
tied by the presence of responsible advisers prefer that the fetters 
should not be put upon them. And we have experienced more 
than once in this Congress that measures of national moment, 
passed unanimously by this House, have rested unacted upon else- 
where. Sir, there is small prospect of securing the passage of any 
measure which has to be forced upon opponents at the other end 
of the avenue. It is impossible to get even a vote upon such 
measures unless they are placed upon bills that put them before 
the public eye, and require a vote either in the affirmative or neg- 
ative. I avow, sir, that it was not to insure the passage of the 
amendment, but to compel a vote on it, that I moved it when 
I did. 

Mr. Chairman, we are creating a navy at enormous cost ; not 
increasing a navy ; not merely continuing the ordinary expenses 
of a navy ; we are creating one. We are driven to the necessity 
of passing from a second or a third rate into the class of a first- 
rate naval power, and the question we have to decide is under 
what responsibility, by whose advice, under whose auspices, shall 
that great change be made? We have now had the experience 
of four years of war. The changes made have been made under 
the auspices of the Secretary of the Navy and his irresponsible 
assistant secretary, who is the real and acting Secretary of the 
Navy, and of the chief of the Bureau of Engineers ; and beyond 
that responsibility there is no responsibility to the people or the 
country for any thing that has been done heretofore or any thing 
that may be done hereafter. 

What has been the result? We are taught to believe that we 
are a great naval power. We have the semblance certainly ; 
whether we have the reality is something that remains to be seen. 
We are told by authority that we have 671 vessels of war, and 
that we have 4610 guns afloat, or for which vessels are being built. 
If that be so, then we are a great naval power, though perhaps not 
the first class. But, sir, it is important to analyze that statement, 
and see what there is of substance in it — how many guns there 



484 ADMINISTRATION OF THE NAVY DEPARTMENT. 

are afloat that must go down in the first collision, how many that 
can bear the flag of the republic in the face of a great naval pow- 
er. When we scan the figures given us by the Department, and 
analyze in the light of the reports of the Department the origin, 
structure, and speed of the vessels which bear the guns, and apply 
to it the judgment of naval men, the laws and conditions which 
'are to be observed in the construction of naval vessels — matters 
upon which I am not entitled to express an opinion, but on which 
I may quote the opinion of those who are professionally compe- 
tent — we find that these figures dwindle to more modest propor- 
tions ; that the real navy of the nation is greatly less than the ap- 
parent navy of the report. 

The aggregate given by the Secretary's report is 651 vessels, 
with 4610 guns. But there are 112 sailing vessels, with 850 guns. 
The Secretary of the Navy tells us that sailing vessels are useless 
for the purposes of modern war. It is useless, after that author- 
ity, to quote any other ; for if the Secretary of the Navy knows 
it, then every midshipman at least knows it, and every body else 
in the country. Then 850 guns are to be taken from the appar- 
ent power of the navy. We have, besides, 174 paddle-wheel 
steamers bought ; that is to say, merchant vessels, with all their 
machinery exposed, so that a single shot subjects them to the fate 
of the Hatteras, exploded and sunk by the Alabama in the Gulf 
of Mexico. They are not war vessels, built for naval service, but 
ordinary mercantile vessels, purchased by the United States for 
the purposes of the blockade. Now, sir, I do not criticise the pro- 
priety of those purchases ; on the contrary, I think they were emi- 
nently wise when they were made. Whether they were made as 
economically as possible is a matter that I do not propose to con- 
sider. But to place them among the war vessels of the navy, and 
to think that those 174 vessels, carrying 921 guns, are to be ac- 
counted part of the naval strength of the United States in the 
event of a naval war, is a delusion that must result in disaster. 

There are, besides, 149 screw vessels, light propeller vessels, 
likewise bought from the mercantile marine. Every naval man 
knows that no vessel constructed for mere mercantile purposes is 
or can be made a vessel of war fit to be placed in line of battle in 
a great naval struggle. They answer to catch blockade-runners ; 
they will answer possibly to cruise after the commerce of the en- 
emy. But when the flag of England shall float over a fleet repre- 



MONITORS AND ARMORED SHIPS. 485 

senting in this day that which Nelson commanded at Trafalgar, 
the nation that meets such a fleet with vessels built for the mer- 
chant service is doomed to disaster ; and when we have a state- 
ment which includes such vessels as a part of the naval strength 
of the country, no man who values the honor of the country, or 
its safety in a day of naval battle, can permit such a statement to 
pass without saying that it is a delusion and a snare. When you 
sum up those vessels, you find, from the aggregate of 671, you 
have stricken off 435 vessels and 2885 guns, and left 236 vessels 
bearing 2225 guns. 

But let us go a step farther. There are likewise of the vessels 
built for naval purjDoses, under the auspices of the Department, 
47 paddle-wheel steamers — double-enders, as they are called — 
ferry-boats, river steamers, hawks to catch blockade-runners ; but 
for a day of naval battle no naval man will allow them to be called 
war vessels at all. Their machinery is all exposed, their very 
boilers are exposed. Whatever may be their availability for 
blockade purposes, though they escape a chance shot from a rov- 
er, as part of the naval force of the United States they must be 
stricken from the list, for it is not possible they could survive a 
collision with vessels of equal armament constructed on naval 
principles. And we must also deduct five paddle-wheel steamers 
of the old navy. These two classes of paddle-wheel steamers 
carry 524 guns ; and if they are deducted from the 2225 guns, 
there remain 1701 guns on 184 vessels of war properly so called. 
So, when we have analyzed the real naval force of the country 
that stands between us and aggression from abroad, we are re- 
duced to the number of 184 vessels and 1701 guns — a respecta- 
ble increase, but an increase which leaves us exposed to over- 
whelming disaster if we stop there ; a difference between the of- 
ficial statement and the real condition of the naval force of the 
government to which the attention of the people should be called. 

In order to give a clearer idea of the real force existing and 
what has been added by the Department since the rebellion broke 
out, it is necessary to say that of these 184 vessels, 25 are screw 
steamers of the old navy, which I suspect can sink all the wooden 
vessels which have been added of the new navy by the mere 
weight of their batteries ; 62 iron-clads, of which 22 are not afloat, 
leaving only 40 in service ; and 97 wooden vessels, mostly of 
small size; none at least of large size; none beyond the grade of 



486 ADMINISTRATION OF THE NAVY DEPARTMENT. 

a sloop-of-war of moderate size, at present afloat ; for 28 vessels 
included in that 97 are, I believe, now upon the stocks, and that 
28 include all the larger cruisers mentioned in the Secretary's re- 
port ; so that our fleet actually afloat is reduced to about 184 ves- 
sels, bearing 1150 guns. And there we stand to-day if we have 
a declaration of war with England to-morrow. 
" The organization of the Navy Department, as I have already 
said, leaves the whole responsibility of the construction of all na- 
val vessels, their forms, structure, armament, machinery, and ma- 
terials, limited only by the amount of money appropriated for 
their construction, at the irresponsible discretion of the three per- 
sons I have named ; for the organization of the Navy Department 
is a secretary who administers it, an assistant secretary who ad- 
ministers him, and the chiefs of bureaus who are the ministerial 
fingers and hands of the gentleman at the head of the Navy De- 
partment. Such an organization of a Navy Department exists 
nowhere else in the civilized world among naval powers. In our 
fast American style, we sneer at the slow motions and grave de- 
liberation that mark every step of the great naval powers of the 
world, France and England, yet to-morrow we are unable to cope 
with either of them with one half of their force in ranged battle 
on the ocean. 

Their organization, Mr. Chairman, is a different one. In En- 
gland we know that the office of Lord High Admiral is exercised 
by a board of six commissioners, who are called Lords of Admi- 
ralty, and a chief Secretary of the Admiralty. The First Lord 
of the Admiralty is a member of the cabinet, and the Secretary 
must be a member of the House of Commons, where he is charged 
with the naval estimates. The powers which are exercised in 
England by the Board of Admiralty are here exercised by the 
Secretary of the Navy. The Board of Admiralty in England is 
charged with the responsible and discretionary administration of 
the Navy as the Secretary is here, both having ministerial officers 
under them which with us are called chiefs of bureaus. 

The French navy is administered by the minister Secretary of 
State for the Marine and the Colonies. He is surrounded by a 
Council of Admiralty, composed of three naval officers of high 
grade, vice or rear admirals, and three high officers of colonial 
administration, named by the crown, presided over by the minis- 
ter, and charged to give its advice on all measures relating to 



MONITORS AND ARMORED SHIPS. 487 

maritime and colonial legislation, the administration of the colo- 
nies, the organization of the naval force, the modes of supplying 
it, naval structures and buildings, and to the direction and em- 
ployment of the naval force in time of war. This council is in- 
tended for advice on the higher matters of legislation and admin- 
istration. But the minister is provided with another Council of 
Naval Works, composed of the. inspector general of naval con- 
struction, the inspector of artillery, the inspectors general of hy- 
draulic constructions, two captains of the navy, a director of naval 
constructions, and an engineer of the navy, acting as secretary, 
with a deliberative voice, the whole presided over by one of the 
Council of Admiralty, and charged to give its advice on matters 
submitted to it by the minister, on the plans and estimates for na- 
val constructions, hydraulic works, material of artillery, and all 
works in navy yards, on the preparation of regulations for the 
execution of naval works of all kinds, on the preparation of pro- 
posals for contracts for any of the above objects, on the adoption 
of inventions, and every thing relating to improvements of naval 
structures, artillery, or hydraulic works. Thus the minister Sec- 
retary of State for the Marine and Colonies, aided by a large na- 
val staff of professional officers for professional advice, is charged 
with the responsible administration of the French navy. They 
deliberate in common, constitute the council of the Secretary of 
the Navy, as we should call him, his cabinet, whose advice is to 
guide and enlighten the administrative discretion of the minister. 
It is to the minister, aided by the deliberations of those responsi- 
ble bodies, that the great duties of creating and employing the 
French navy is confided. 

What I propose is this: that we shall create a Board of Admi- 
ralty, adhering to the American idea of the unity of the executive 
or administrative officer, but surrounding him with responsible 
advisers, appointed by the President, not depending upon the ca- 
price and will of the Navy Department ; men of professional stand- 
ing, competent ability, and of high and permanent rank, without 
whose knowledge and advice nothing can be done within the pur- 
view of the bill ; not that their assent shall be necessary to any 
order or act, but that no material step shall be taken with refer- 
ence to the various subjects included in the bill without their ad- 
vice having been previously taken in writing and spread upon 
the records of the Department. The general effect of that is, that 



488 ADMINISTRATION OF THE NAVY DEPARTMENT. 

there can be no such thing as mere improvidence, mere charlatan- 
ism, mere ignorance, or the mere application of civil ideas to mil- 
itary matters. We have learned something during this war ; we 
have learned that every man is not born a soldier or a sailor : he 
may be born a President of the United States, but he is not born 
with the special knowledge belonging to and required of this De- 
partment. What is necessary in order that there shall be a navy 
created is that there shall be men of competent professional knowl- 
edge, who shall advise in a responsible form, authentically, in 
writing ; and if their advice be neglected, the responsibility will 
lie with those who neglect it. The mere existence of such a re- 
sponsible body of advisers infinitely diminishes the chances of 
error, or corruption, or ignorance, or plausible and dangerous 
charlatanism, or rash and improvident conduct. It will be to the 
Secretary what the cabinet is to the President — an aid, not a hin- 
drance. 

We have repeatedly resorted to temporary boards of this kind ; 
one of them was adopted in 1860 to consider the application of 
steam to our sailing vessels ; another was organized by the De- 
partment to devise the plan of blockade ; another was organized 
under a law of Congress for experiments in iron-clads ; and an- 
other, summoned by the Department, was called to advise upon 
the engines of the navy. Others are now, we are informed by the 
report of the Secretary of the Navy, engaged in investigating va- 
rious questions respecting steam machinery. But boards of this 
kind are made^ro hoec vice — are liable to the particular influence 
prevailing at the moment ; made rather to accomplish a particular 
purpose than to give independent advice ; and if created under 
the authority of Congress, and therefore of an independent char- 
acter, they are temporary in their purposes, their influence is not 
permanent, and the effect of their opinions passes off the moment 
they are dissolved. 

What I propose by the bill is that there shall be a board com- 
posed of men of the first responsibilit}? - in the navy, which shall 
be headed by the vice-admiral, who is neither an old fogy, nor a 
charlatan, nor an enemy of the Secretary, but one of the great 
officers of the navy, possessing the confidence of the Department, 
whose opinion they ought to be bound to consult and respect, for 
whom the nation has created a new title and new grade, whom all 
the officers of the navy will cheerfully follow, and constituted of 



MONITORS AND ARMORED SHIPS. 489 

the other officers of designated rank, to be appointed by the Pres- 
ident and confirmed by the Senate, to advise the Secretary in all 
matters relating to naval organization. 

While I can not go into the details of the condition of the Navy 
Department at this time, I think that the opinion of the naval of- 
ficers is that it is a failure as a machinery for successful adminis- 
tration. There is no responsibility any where to be found ; every 
thing is managed by a subordinate in the name of the Secretary, 
and it is more to that than any intentional abuse of power or neg- 
lect on the part of the Secretary that I attribute the rash empir- 
icism, the scandalous improvidence, and the costly failures which 
mark the administration of that Department. The way to avoid 
that is not to howl about them in Congress, but to provide the 
Secretary with responsible advisers on naval construction and the 
armament and machinery of vessels, on the organization and loca- 
tion of navy yards. 

The House has been deprived of the services of the Committee 
on Naval Affairs a large portion of the last year, while they were 
engaged in investigations to advise the Navy Department on the 
selection of a navy yard for iron-clads — a matter which, if they 
were competent to determine, I submit any one single experi- 
enced officer of the navy was more competent to determine. 
And when my friend, the honorable gentleman from Ohio [Mr. 
Schenck], who accompanied them on one trip, was a little sensi- 
tive at my doubts of their competency, he could not refuse his as- 
sent to my avowal that I would take with more confidence the 
opinion of his distinguished brother of the navy than his own 
upon that subject. I think, if there had been a board of compe- 
tent advisers to the Secretary of the Navy on the topics embraced 
in the second section of this bill, that there are some expeditions 
that would not have been undertaken by the Navy Department ; 
I think the nation would have been saved from some failures ; 
and I think some successes would have been followed up, and the 
fruits of victory reaped which to this day are barren. I think 
half a dozen rebel cruisers could not have swept our commerce 
from the ocean, or driven it to take refuge under foreign flags, 
and destroyed many millions of property, and lighted every sea 
with the conflagration of our ships for three years with absolute 
impunity, had any body of competent naval officers been invited 
to devise a systematic plan for their pursuit and capture. I think 



490 ADMINISTRATION OF THE NAVY DEPARTMENT. 

that the great day at Port Eoyal would have produced something 
more than a secure foothold for the blockading squadron. With 
proper advice around the Secretary when Savannah and Charles- 
ton were exposed half armed, that blow would have been follow- 
ed up by others which should have reduced those places; we 
should have been spared the humiliation of a fruitless bombard- 
ment before Charleston for a year and a half — a bombardment 
utterly ineffective, leaving the rebel fortifications there to-day as 
absolutely beyond the reach of our naval forces as they were be- 
fore Gilmore battered Sumter. It would not have been left for 
Sherman and his army, after three or four years of war in the 
West, to march across the continent and take Savannah, but it 
would have been taken long ago by forces actually there. But, 
without any competent advisers, the Navy Department rested 
upon the laurels of Port Eoyal, and left it barren to the nation of 
half its rightful fruits which the victor was so eager to gather. I 
think, if the head of the Department had had proper advisers, 
there would have been no such thing as an attack upon three 
hundred guns in Charleston Harbor by thirty -six guns, if any na- 
val opinions, good or bad, retired or active, had been listened to 
or even asked in the Navy Department. It would not have been 
reserved to the Department to vindicate naval- opinion and con- 
demn its own rash presumption on that occasion by sending four 
hundred and fifty guns to batter Port Fisher with its fifty or sixty 
guns, after sending thirty-six guns to tear in pieces the enormous 
fortifications of Charleston bristling with three hundred guns. 
One or the other is an unspeakable folly ; and history has already 
declared which. 

But what I wish more particularly to remark upon is what has 
been accomplished by the Navy Department. Where are we now, 
and how did we get there? I desire .that it should be borne in 
mind that I am not now seeking to cast imputations upon any- 
one, to show his incompetency, but to expose the evils of a mere- 
ly personal and irresponsible administration of the Department, 
and to demonstrate the necessity of a remedy. I make no sug- 
gestions for which I do not propose an adequate remedy. I state 
the failure that gentlemen may be enabled to judge of the pro- 
priety of the remedy. If they can say that a lack of advice does 
not exist, then let them say so. But if they admit the results, 
then give me a judgment upon my remedy. 



MONITORS AND ARMORED SHIPS. 491 

The first great thing that we are called upon to deal with is the 
subject of iron-clads. Congress was conscious that it was going 
into a new department of naval expenditure ; but it failed in the 
drawing of the act which it passed upon that subject. It created 
a board of skilled and eminent naval officers, and upon their ad- 
vice the Secretary of the Navy was authorized to cause one or 
more iron-clads to be built. That board, of which Admiral Charles 
Davis, of Boston, was the scientific head, met and advised the con- 
struction, upon a consideration of multifarious plans oione of each 
of three types of vessels, which are now known to history as the 
Galena, the Ironsides, and the Monitor. They were constructed 
merely as experiments, their value to be subsequently determ- 
ined ; to be determined, I take it, not by acts of Congress, not by 
the irresponsible and unscientific judgment of the Secretary of the 
Navy, however honest, respectable, and praiseworthy, but by com- 
petent men to advise after the idea had been embodied in a vessel 
of war, and was ready to be tried or had been tried in action. 

Now what were the facts? Had the board existed which I 
propose, we would not be suffering as we now are from the neg- 
lect of those precautions. How came it that the monitors which 
we know now to be failures were multiplied, while the Department 
neglected the Ironsides, the only one of all the iron-clad vessels, 
with perhaps one doubtful exception, that has met the approval 
of naval officers. 

The Monitor accidentally came into Hampton Eoads as the 
Merrimac was trying to destroy, as it had already destroyed, 
some of our vessels. A collision took place. Neither party was 
destroyed ; neither vessel was sunk ; neither party was crippled, 
it is said ; and the country ran wild over two guns in a cheese-box 
on a raft having done any thing, and not been defeated. People 
forget that our vessels were either sailing vessels at anchor which 
were destroyed, or steamers which had run aground in the nar- 
row channel ; that the Merrimac drew more water than they and 
could not reach them, and was no stronger than the Minnesota, 
her duplicate, and therefore weaker when burdened by her armor, 
and liable to be run down by our steamers when afloat, which 
were beyond reach of the Merrimac when aground. And upon 
the simple fact that the Monitor and the Merrimac exchanged 
shots and did not sink, without consultation with one single naval 
officer any where, without the judgment of any one professional 



492 ADMINISTRATION OF THE NAVY DEPARTMENT. 

man upon the floating or the fighting qualities of this class of ves- 
sels, without any additional consideration except that the Depart- 
ment tells us it had been well persuaded in its own mind before- 
hand by the spirit of prophecy that that type of iron-clad was to 
be successful and had proved itself successful, the Secretary orders 
twenty of them at a cost of from four hundred thousand to four 
hundred and sixty thousand dollars, amounting to $9,200,000. 
This was done upon the fight between the Monitor and the Mer- 
rimac, and no other consideration whatever. So the Department 
tells you in its report. 

From that day to this monitors have been a gold mine for iron 
contractors, and to doubt their perfect success is as much as any 
naval officer's chances of command or promotion are worth. 

That is the consideration that was given to this great topic. 
On an accidental collision between one vessel and another, with- 
out any of its scientific bearings having been adjudged and con- 
sidered by competent officers, $9,200,000 were spent in construct- 
ing upon that type, without any material change, twenty vessels 
of that character. And so closely did they stick to the model, 
that one of the most distinguished officers of the navy, who now 
enjoys the highest considerations of the Navy Department, told 
me that he had to battle day after day with Eriasson and the men 
who were building them to get them to put upon those vessels 
the most ordinary naval appliances to fit them to be used at all in 
Charleston Harbor. 

Following up that, the Department proceeded likewise, without 
any naval advice or investigation, to order the Dictator and the 
Puritan, under the authority of Congress, which improvidently 
left every thing to the Department and the contractors and specu- 
lators, at a cost of $2,300,000. Each monitor was to carry about 
two guns, which would make each gun cost about two hundred 
and fifty thousand dollars. The Dictator and the Puritan were 
to carry, I think the former about two, the latter four guns, 
which would make the cost of each gun of the Dictator $575,000, 
and of each gun of the Puritan $287,500. Then they ordered 
the Dunderberg, not yet completed, but on the plan of the case- 
mated batteries of the rebels, likely to be more formidable than 
the vessels on the monitor principle, for she will have a battery 
of ten guns. So that just at one breath, by one stroke of the pen, 
the Department expended in this type of vessels, without any other 



MONITORS AND ARMORED SHIPS. 493 

consideration or advice whatever, $13,000,000. I submit, sir, that 
after the resolution of this House, passed last year, to make addi- 
tional compensation to the constructors of the Dictator and Puri- 
tan in addition to the enormous contract already made with them, 
the honor and dignity of the country required that more consid- 
eration should have been given, more scientific advice should 
have been asked, before such enormous sums were expended in 
forms so totally new, which no "experience had justified, which no 
naval opinion had then advised, and which no naval opinion at 
this day now advises. 

Then, sir, there were others built, I suppose at the navy yards. 
I do not see any details respecting them in the reports, and I can 
not speak in regard to them. That, sir, was the work of 1862, as 
the Department informed us. 

In 1863, when the additional monitors were ordered, to which 
I am now going to refer, there had been no trial of the original 
monitors excepting that one accidental and partial experiment in 
Hampton Eoads, in smooth waters, a drawn battle, and excepting 
the failure on the Ogeechee to silence a land battery that mounted 
four guns, and the experience of the attack in Charleston Harbor 
on the 7th of April, 1863, when one half of the monitor force was 
silenced in forty minutes. On that discouraging experience, listen 
to the Secretary's account of new contracts for more monitors. 

' ' The pressure for iron-clads of light draught, which could ascend the rivers, and 
penetrate the sounds and bays along our coast, was felt to be a necessity." 

That is, the pressure was felt to be a necessity. "Well, so it was. 
The pressure of iron contractors, I take it, not of naval officers. 
The Secretary proceeds, 

"The operations of our armies in the vicinity of the inland waters and adjacent 
to the rivers required the constant presence of gunboats. But the men thus em- 
ployed, as well as the magazines and machinery of the vessels, are exposed, espe- 
cially in the narrow streams with high and wooded banks. Some vessels and not a 
few valuable lives have been lost by these exposures, and in order to afford all pos- 
sible protection to the gallant men who encounter these dangers, the Department 
considered it a duty to provide armored vessels of light draught for their security. 
Contracts were entered into for the construction of twenty vessels on the monitor 
principle, each to carry two eleven-inch guns iu order to be efficient, and to draw 
but seven feet of water." 

Now contracts for those vessels were made in the course of 
1863, from March to August. They cost from $386,000 to 
$395,000 each vessel, amounting in the aggregate to $7,800,000 ! 



494 ADMINISTRATION OF THE NAVY DEPARTMENT. 

Upon what advice ? Upon whose opinion ? Upon what consid- 
eration? Upon what specification? Upon what calculation? 
To accomplish what purpose? Let the gentleman who repre- 
sents the Department answer. So. carelessly, so absolutely with- 
out scientific consideration that the Department has been forced 
in its report at this session to confess and smooth over its failure 
in the construction of vessels — utter, absolute, ridiculous, disgrace- 
ful — a failure, Mr. Chairman, which is inexcusable, because, irre- 
spective of the naval or fighting qualities of a vessel, the weight 
of iron, the weight of water, the ratio of displacement, and exactly 
how the vessel will float, when dimensions and material are given, 
is a question of mathematical and physical research, settled for 
centuries, that no school-boy would hesitate at if the conditions of 
the problem were placed before him. Yet so carelessly were these 
vessels, at those enormous sums, ordered, that there was an abso- 
lute failure of the whole fleet. All of them had to be materially 
altered. Some nearly sank when they were launched, and I learn 
had to be shored up with barrels in the harbor before the work- 
men would go on them in order to complete them. One at Pitts- 
burg sank — went straight to the bottom when launched. But I 
do not pretend to official evidence in these things. These are the 
rumors. But here is the official confession of the failure, which is 
more than enough. The Secretary tells us, " It was ascertained, 
however, when the first two approached completion, that their 
draught of water was more than was intended." Had the weight 
of water changed, or the weight of iron, or had the laws of arith- 
metic changed ? "Was the calculation proved to be false after it 
was made? Or, indeed, was there any calculation ? Did Mr. Fox 
sit in his office, and when a man came in with the model of a mon- 
itor of light draught and heavy cost, ask him, How much water 
will that draw ? So much. Then build me that thing. Is that 
administration in time of war, and debt, and danger? 
The report says : 

"The heavy armor and the two eleven-inch guns, with the machinery to give 
them proper speed, involved the necessity of enlarging the capacity of each of them." 

There was another question of arithmetic, and of the twenty 
not one could carry their machinery or their guns. Who devised 
their machinery ? I suppose the head of the engineering depart- 
ment. Who advised the form, capacity, or weight of the moni- 
tors ? It is nobody, or Mr. Fox. 



MONITORS AND ARMORED SHIPS. 495 

" When making these necessary alterations, it was deemed advisable, under ap- 
plication from some of the commanders of squadrons for boats that should present 
but a small rise above the surface of the water, to dispense with the turrets in five 
of these light-draught vessels, with a view to special operations. The remaining 
fifteen were ordered to be enlarged by raising their decks, thereby giving them ad- 
ditional tonnage and greater draught, and making them more efficient, but in other 
respec-ts carrying out the original design. This work is now being performed, and 
most of the vessels are near completion." 

So the Secretary informs us that he dispensed with the turrets 
upon five of the light-draught vessels. Why? Because, with the 
turrets, they were not light-draughts. The only thing in which 
a monitor differs from an iron box is this revolving turret, and 
when the turrets were taken away they failed to be monitors at 
all. Yet the monitor price was paid, with a large addition to 
cover the official blunder. The remaining fifteen were ordered to 
be enlarged to make them draw less water! Their decks were 
raised in order to give them additional tonnage — an official euphu- 
ism, in which raising them above the water is put for sinking 
them deeper in the water to get them to float at all. The} 7 had 
too much draught before, and they would not float unless they 
had more cubic contents to buoy them up ! The Department 
wanted light-draughts, not heavy-draughts. Those built before 
were too heavy to get into shoal waters. The Secretary says that 
in all other respects the original design is being carried out — they 
have only been made more efficient. But the original design was 
for light-draught monitors and nothing else ; yet the light-draught 
has been abandoned on all for heavier draught, which excludes 
them from answering the original design wholly ; and on five the 
turret is gone — so they are neither monitors nor light-draughts ! 
What part of the original design remains but to give $7,000,000 
to iron contractors to be invested in worthless iron ? If there 
was any consideration on that subject, if any advice was taken, 
the officer who gave it ought to be cashiered. If there was not 
any consideration, no professional advice asked, I leave it to the 
Naval Committee to say what judgment should be pronounced 
upon the Department. 

We come next to the consideration of the sea-going iron-clads, 
because even the Secretary of the Navy will not allow American 
genius to be chained to our own coast. For that purpose we are 
told by the Department— I beg to be understood that I am using 
official information, obtained from official documents, and noth- 



496 ADMINISTRATION OF THE NAVY DEPARTMENT. 

ing else — we are told by the Department that they wanted two 
swift sea-going iron-clads that should be able to cross the ocean 
and dictate the law abroad, and therefore one was called the Dic- 
tator and the other was called the Puritan — a singular mingling 
of the religious and warlike element, I suppose in memory of the 
great Puritan Dictator. But when he dictated, it was to kings on 
the field of battle ; but the things they have made here, and 
marked with the names of power, will dictate nowhere except at 
the bottom of the ocean. The two were to cost $2,300,000. I 
think the Dictator was to carry two guns of enormous calibre, 
and the Puritan four, I think. Divide, and you will find what 
each gun costs. They are to go to sea. Sir, the Dictator can not 
carry more than six days' supply of coal with her armament, am- 
munition, and necessary provisions for sea, without going to the 
bottom. " Swift to pursue the enemy I" Why, sir, she can not 
go over six miles an hour, I believe, burning fifty -four tons of 
coal a day at that ; for that, I am told, has been proved by the 
result of her trip from New York to Fortress Monroe. But in 
this matter I am outside of the record and official information. I 
make this statement upon what I suppose good authority ; the 
log of the Dictator can correct it if erroneous. She started from 
New York to join in the attack on Fort Fisher. ' I have not offi- 
cial authority for saying, but I think it will not be controverted, 
that she did not go there because her machinery broke down in 
going from New York to Fortress Monroe, and I understand she 
is detained there undergoing repairs. Then that is not a sea-go- 
in«- iron-clad, nor a swift iron-clad, nor one available for offensive 
warfare. However destructive she may be if the enemy consult 
her convenience by taking position within her range, yet the 
swiftest vessel has the choice of field, and the enemy will not stay 
within her range unless it is to close on and board her, or to shut 
up her port-holes by rapid, and concentrated, and continuous fire, 
which will prevent her using the enormous shots which go -once 
in seven or eight minutes, or crush her thin decks with shot as 
heavy as her own. 

But these are matters for navy men to settle ; all that is now 
known is that the Dictator is as useless for a sea-going vessel of 
war as the light-draught monitors are to go in shallow water. 

A moment as to the providence with which the contract was 
made. I remember to have heard — and the records of the De- 



MONITORS AND ARMORED SHIPS. 497 

partment will correct me if I am not correctly informed — there 
were claims made for extra compensation on those two vessels, and 
a board was summoned, consisting of officers whose names I will 
not mention. I do not know how much, but perhaps two hund- 
red thousand dollars were demanded. The board declined to 
recommend it. Another board was summoned of more pliant 
material, and they recommended the allowance not only of what 
was asked, but greatly more ; and, if I am not misinformed — and 
here again the Department has the record — the award was so 
much beyond what was asked that application was made, formal 
or informal, to withdraw the original application ! 

The Secretary of the Navy shrank from acting under the ad- 
vice of such a board. The claimants then came here to Congress, 
and Congress at its last session, upon the motion of the honorable 
gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Eice], passed a resolution 
making material additions to the compensation awarded; how 
nobody knows. The result has been that the Puritan remains, I 
believe, upon the stocks, uncompleted, and nobody knows when, 
if ever, she will be completed. The Dictator lies with her ma- 
chinery broken on her first trip from New York to Fortress 
Monroe. 

Such is the investment of the Department in sea-going iron- 
clads, and there it stops. When the Dunderberg comes out we 
shall know more about her ; but she is not of the monitor class. 
Her engines are not of bureau device, but by the builders ; she 
will bear ten guns, and may be a powerful floating battery, hard- 
ly any thing more. We are without a single sea-going iron-clad 
capable of cruising, the Ironsides alone excepted. 

Now, sir, to what purpose are these vessels of the monitor type 
adapted? They have no ram. Their engines are so weak that 
in collision they can do no harm. Their draught is eleven and a 
half feet, perhaps twelve, instead of ten. They have no sails ; 
they can not attack ; they can not escape if attacked ; they can 
not batter forts with any success ; they have never yet silenced a 
sand-battery, or shaken a stone of a casemated fort, any where, at 
any time. It does not appear that in the course of a year's oper- 
ations before Charleston, any impression has been made there 
upon any fortification of any kind. At Fort M'Allister, the rebel 
officers mounted the ramparts and smoked their cigars between 
the shots. They can not stand heavy and continuous battering, 

Ii 



498 ADMINISTRATION OF THE NAVY DEPARTMENT. 

for, though the turrets be not pierced, their machinery for turning 
the turret, closing the ports, and working the guns, is so delicate 
as to deprive them of half their fire by constant derangement; 
and if a line-of-battle ship has half her guns silenced, it is sup- 
posed she is materially damaged in the conflict, though hull and 
engine survive. Of the seven monitors that went into action in 
Charleston Harbor, four of them were partially or wholly dis- 
abled in forty minutes. That is a proportion of loss that Trafal- 
gar did not show. 

Safe ? Why, sir, their liability to sink, whether from a torpedo 
or the storms of the ocean, when going down the coast, is more 
fatal to life than an ordinary general action. Four of them, in- 
cluding the original Monitor itself, have already sunk, out of the 
twenty that have been built and launched, carrying down nearly 
all the crews. The Weehawken went down in perfectly quiet 
water in Charleston Harbor, carrying thirty men with her ; one 
nearly sank lying at the "Washington navy yard ; the original 
Monitor went down on its way to Port Eoyal ; the Patapsco was 
sunk the other day by a torpedo in Charleston Harbor, and car- 
ried down some seventy men, it is said ; and the Tecumseh sunk 
in the action at Mobile, burying Craven and all but three or four 
of her crew. The unpublished health reports exhibit disastrous 
and unprecedented results. The ratio of loss, taking the liability 
to sickness, the chances of sinking, together with the chances of 
losses in action, shows that they were not safer, and are less ef- 
fective in fight, than ordinary wooden vessels. Every body will 
appreciate the remark of Admiral Porter when he intimates that 
he had rather stand behind his wooden walls and take what comes, 
than be confined in one of these iron coffins. And it is remark- 
able that this class of vessels has nowhere received, and can not 
now get, the suffrage of any respectable proportion of the Ameri- 
can navy as any part of the national defense at all, unless it be be- 
hind obstructions across the entrance of a port where they can 
not be reached; and casemated batteries, with numerous and 
equally heavy guns, not costing $250,000 a gun, can do that duty 
with equal effect. And any one who will read, what I have not 
now time to read, the special report of Admiral Porter on these 
vessels at Fort Fisher, will find that, while he complacently deco- 
rates them with words of vague eulogy, yet his criticism leaves 
them nothing of peculiar value, and his consent never could be 



MONITORS AND ARMORED SHIPS. 499 

gotten to build another monitor. The single exception is the 
Monadnock, whose sailing qualities he speaks highly of; but her 
engines were not built under the auspices of the Navy Depart- 
ment, and she is not a monitor at all in point of fact. He did not 
venture to put the ammunition on board these vessels before they 
started ; he did not venture to put their coal on board, but towed 
every one of them down the coast to Beaufort, and when they got 
there their ammunition and coal were placed on them for the 
first time. And any one who will compare the results in Mobile 
Bay with the results at Fort Fisher will find that the effective 
instruments in each case were the broadside vessels, with their 
concentrated and rapid fire, covering the whole field of battle with 
their shells, rendering it untenable to any one ; while, as I have 
already mentioned, when the monitors alone were engaged at 
Fort McAllister, the officers did not hesitate to stand upon the 
ramparts and smoke their cigars between the shots. Admiral 
Farragut is entitled to be heard upon the question of naval arma- 
ment, and he did not ascribe any decisive influence on the result 
at Mobile, one of the great days of our republic, to our iron-clads. 
He did not think that the monitors defeated the enemy in that 
conflict, the most serious conflict between vessels during the re- 
bellion. Hear his report : 

" Our iron-clads, from their slow speed and bad steering, had some difficulty in 
getting into and maintaining their position in line as we passed the fort, and, in the 
subsequent encounter with the Tennessee, from the same causes were not as effective 
as could have been desired ; but I can not give too much praise to Lieutenant Com- 
mander Perkins, who, though he had orders from the Department to return North, 
volunteered to take command of the Chickasaw, and did his duty nobly. 

"The Winnebago was commanded by Commander T. H. Stevens, who volunteered 
for that position. His vessel steers very badly, and neither of his turrets will work, 
which compelled him to turn his vessel every time to get a shot, so that he could 
not fire very often ; but he did the best under the circumstances. 

" The Manhattan appeared to work well, though she moved slowly. Commander 
Nicholson delivered his fire deliberately, and, as before stated, with one of his fif- 
teen-inch shots broke through the armor of the Tennessee, with its wooden backing, 
though the shot itself did not enter the vessel. No other shot broke through the 
armor, though many of her plates were started, and several of her port shutters 
jammed by the fire from the different ships." 

That is not my judgment nor the judgment from an officer at 
war with the Department, but the judgment of an officer whose 
name in history will rest on that day. It is not magnanimous to 
depreciate the merits and power of vessels and arms which did 



500 ADMINISTRATION OF THE NAVY DEPARTMENT. 

his work, and lie could not have penned the report if the moni- 
tors were the dominant power in the battle. He was on board 
his wooden vessel, with his other wooden vessels ; their rapid and 
powerful batteries converging on the Tennessee from every quar- 
ter and silencing her fire, and their rapid rush, or, as a gentleman 
very appropriately said, the mobbing of the Tennessee by the 
•wooden vessels, determined the contest, and not the slow, unmov- 
ing, helpless, powerless monitors that were there to look on at a 
battle in which they barely participated. The same thing has 
been experienced elsewhere ; but I quote Admiral Farragut be- 
cause his testimony is in print, and because there can be no ques- 
tion as to its meaning; because every body knows that he is a 
naval man, and one who would make use of every means placed 
in his hands, and fairly distribute the merits of the result. 

Again, at Fort Fisher, monitors mingled their fire with the 
heavy fire of broadside vessels, and none -is so competent to speak 
of the value of the monitor as Admiral Porter. He says : 

"Compared with the Ironsides, their fire is very slow, and not at all calculated 
to silence heavy batteries, which requires a rapid and continuous fire to drive men 
from their guns ; but they are famous coadjutors in fight — " 

Why, certainly, any thing will help upon a pinch, 

"and put in heavy blows which tell on casemates and bomb-proofs." 

But they never yet destroyed a bomb-proof or tore to pieces a 
casemate. After a bombardment of two days at Fort Fisher, 
when it is said all the guns were dismounted, and the work torn 
to pieces, twenty-five hundred men with whole skins rose from 
beneath the ruins ready to dispute the possession of that fort, and 
held it during five hours of hand-to-hand conflict with the army 
led by the heroic Terry. 

If that were all the effect of four hundred and fifty guns of the 
whole fleet, how much is to be ascribed to the ten guns of the 
monitors ? And how much was effected by the first bombard- 
ment of two or three days with the same enormous force, if so 
soon the fort was ready for defense ? 

But Admiral Porter proceeds: 

" The smaller class of monitors, as at present constructed, will always require the 
aid of a steamer to tow them and take care of them. In smooth water they ought 
to go along by themselves, and when towed the tow-rope should never be less than 
two hundred fathoms in length. It strains them very much to have a short tow- 
line." 



MONITORS AND ARMORED SHIPS. 501 

Then he thinks them worthless as sea vessels, incapable of in- 
dependent action as at present constructed — that is, as monitors 
built at a cost of $250,000 a gun. 

He proceeds : 

" I do not know yet what their real durability is or would be in a continuous fire 
against their turrets. Solid eleven-inch or two-hundred-pounder rifles are apt to 
break something when they strike, and I should be much better satisfied myself to 
be behind wooden bulwarks, and take what comes, than to be shut up in an iron 
turret, not knowing whether it is properly constructed. This, though, is the preju- 
dice of an old sailor, and should have no weight whatever." 

So he thinks not much more of their defensive than of their 
aggressive qualities, and prefers the risk with the power of broad- 
side vessels. That is the naval opinion, not my judgment, upon 
the monitors at Fort Fisher. 

The Monadnock, a turreted vessel, but not a monitor, alone at- 
tracted Porter's good opinion : 

"As to the Monadnock, she could ride out a gale at anchor in the Atlantic Ocean. 
She is certainly a most perfect success so far as the hull and machinery are con- 
cerned, and is only defective in some minor details, which, in the building of these 
vessels, require the superintendence of a thorough seaman, and a practical and in- 
genious man. The Monadnock is capable of crossing the ocean alone (when her 
compasses are once adjusted properly), and could destroy any vessel in the French 
or British navy, lay their town under contribution, and return again (provided she 
could pick up coal) without fear of being followed." 

But her speed is no merit of the Department, for her engines 
were not on their plans. If she could work such wonders abroad, 
why not try her on Charleston ? And the coal question seems to 
interpose an insuperable barrier to transatlantic exploits, unless 
she is to remain there. 

The admiral turns to the Ironsides : 

"I have never yet seen a vessel that comes up to my ideas of what is required for 
effective operations as much as the Ironsides. The most important is the comfort 
with which the people on board of her live, though she would be no match for the 
Monadnock in a fight, the latter having more speed. 

"The accuracy of fire is, I think, in favor of the Ironsides, judging from what I 
have seen here. The turrets get filled with smoke, and do not clear as quick as the 
Ironsides, though that defect could be avoided by not firing both guns so near to- 
gether." 

Yet this class of vessels, of which the Department have, I be- 
lieve, but one, which was built upon the recommendation of the 
original commission, has not been multiplied. They propose to 
build no more. She can go abroad ; she can make her cannon 



502 ADMINISTRATION OF THE NAVY DEPARTMENT. 

heard on the shores of Great Britain ; she can sail as well as 
steam ; and she can carry coal enough to enable her to steam to 
any extent that may be necessary for the success of her opera- 
tions. She cost only $780,000, just $80,000 above what the De- 
partment paid for a single engine in 1863 ! ! 

Now, sir, it is material to observe that as the judgment of a 
navy man upon this iron-clad, the Ironsides. It was one built 
upon the advice of naval men. She is one that has not been re- 
peated. She is the one that has not been accepted by the De- 
partment. Why ? No one can tell, unless it be that the Navy 
Department had gone crazy on monitors, and was so deeply en- 
gaged in their construction that no money or thought remained 
for any thing else. Can any one doubt but that others of the 
Ironsides class would have been built if naval men had been con- 
sulted ? 

Now, sir, I pass from that to the other question, on which I have 
something to say. I can not say as much upon this as I desire. 
I come to the great question of machinery ; no corruption in con- 
tracts — nothing of the kind — but to the responsible advice on 
which the existing machinery of the navy has been made ; sim- 
ply as a business transaction, treating it as a question of prudence 
and common sense in the administration of the government. "We 
have twenty -three screw gunboats of the Unadilla class, twelve 
double-enders of the Miami class, ten of the Juniata class, twenty- 
seven double-enders of the Utah class, and one or two other ves- 
sels made of iron, and I believe likewise of the double-ender class, 
whose machinery was built on the plans and designs of the Bu- 
reau of Engineering, as the head of the bureau tells us in his re- 
port. There are likewise four other vessels built by the Depart- 
ment, the Oneida, the Tuscarora, Wachusett, and Kearsarge, dupli- 
cates of the Iroquois, the Mohegan, the Wyoming, and the Semi- 
nole. Their machinery was not devised by the Bureau of Steam 
Engineering, but was copied from the machinery of the other four 
vessels of which they were duplicates, and on principles which the 
Department discarded in the machinery designed by the bureau, 
and placed in the vessels of the four classes above mentioned. 

In the course of the year 1862, as the screw sloops of the Juniata 
class and the paddle-wheel double-enders were being completed 
and put afloat, a serious question arose as to the efficiency and 
durability of machinery. The Department summoned a board of 



MONITORS AND ARMORED SHIPS. 503 

the first engineers of the United States to take their opinion on 
what the Department had done without the advice of any body. 
That board was requested to convene and investigate the machin- 
ery of the screw steamers of the Juniata, Monongahela, and Lack- 
awana class, and of the paddle-wheel steamers then building, and 
report to the Department upon a series of questions. That report 
was made, printed, and a copy of it has been handed to me. Now 
the first thing to be observed is, that on page 69 of that report, 
this commission of civil engineers, summoned by the Secretary of 
the Navy to judge his machinery, say the ability to propel naval 
vessels of proper model at a high rate of speed is an essential 
point in designing the machinery, and not less than twelve knots 
per hour for screw vessels should be attainable on emergencies, 
under favorable circumstances at sea. They then proceed to 
give their opinion upon the machinery. I will read for the in- 
struction of the committee a few passages to show how great was 
the divergency of judgment between the engineers selected by 
the Department and the engineer officers who constructed the 
machinery, at a cost of $12,000,000, which now renders our naval 
vessels the laughing-stock of every blockade-runner. It says : 

' ' Interrogatories . 

"1. On the valve gear, whether it admits of using the steam with such degree 
of expansion, or is usual or desirable with marine engines for the naval service, and 
whether it is a proper one for screw and paddle-wheel engines, as the case may be? 

"In reply to the first interrogatory, we separate our opinion in relation to the 
screw and paddle-wheel engines. For the screw engines it is considered by the 
board (with the exception of two members named hereafter) that the principle 
adopted in admitting and exhausting steam by one side-wheel valve, actuated by 
the link motion, though not deemed the best in all cases, is, all things considered, 
proper in the present case, combining simplicity of construction with such a range 
of expansion as is usual or desirable in the naval service. But the use of very large 
steam ports, so much in the excess of the proportion adopted by the best builders, 
while, by permitting a free exhaust, it may afford a slight advantage, has involved 
a serious loss of steam, in our opinion overbalancing such an advantage. It has 
also entailed all the evils of great travel of valve, namely, difficulty of reversing, 
increased friction and wear, and a system of gear to work it of excessive size, 
weight, and cost, both in construction and maintenance. 

" For the paddle-wheel steamers, it is believed that, although it would have been 
better to have adopted a form of valve gear, having an arrangement for adjusting 
while in motion, yet that the principle adopted must be considered a proper one for 
the purpose, since the admitting and exhausting of the steam are accomplished by 
different valves and different movements, which in the use of slowly reciprocating 



504 ADMINISTRATION OF THE NAVY DEPARTMENT. 

engines for marine purposes is very desirable. It is also believed that little if any 
loss of fuel will result from controlling the engine by the throttle in those cases of 
emergency when it is ordinarily deemed proper to quickly alter the rate of expan- 
sion. We arc, however, compelled to object in this case, as in the other, to the 
great and unnecessary size of ports used, much in excess of that which, iji our judg- 
ment, is requisite, entailing, as it does, a great loss of steam as well as additional 
expense of construction." 

" 2. On the boilers, whether they are superior, equal, or inferior to others in use 
in compactness, durability, efficiency, and proper adaptation to the conditions of the 
naval service ?. * * * * * *** 

" 1. In regard to compactness, to obtain an equal amount of evaporation under 
ordinary circumstances, the boiler used in the steamers under consideration is infe- 
rior to the horizontal tubular boiler, requiring about ten per cent, more cubular 
space. 2. In regard to durability. We regard the boiler used in these steamers 
as equal in this respect to the horizontal tubular boiler, proper care and attention 
being bestowed in each case. 3. In regard to efficiency, including economical ef- 
fect and evaporative power, with natural draught. In the former particular, econ- 
omy, taking all the conditions of the itse of the naval boilers into consideration, we 
think the vertical tubular boiler used in these steamers is equal to the horizontal 
tubular. A farther note on this subject, by five of the members, will be found in a 
subsequent part of the report. As to the second particular, namely, evaporative 
power under natural draught, irrespective of economical effect, the vertical tubular 
"is inferior to the horizontal tubular boiler, requiring one third more cubical con- 
tents to produce the same amount of steam. 4. In regard to accessibility for clean- 
ing and repair. In this respect, taking into consideration the liability to derange- 
ment from carelessness, and the facilities for cleaning fire and water spaces, and for 
effective repairs, both at sea and in port, we consider the vertical water tube boiler 
in use in these steamers as, upon the whole, inferior to the horizontal tubular boiler. 
5. Power of producing large evaporation with least sacrifice of economical effect by 
artificial means. In this respect we consider the vertical tubular as inferior to the 
horizontal tubular boiler. The former is in this respect open to serious objections. 
It requires the use of artificial means to produce an evaporation which is ordinarily 
obtained with ease in the horizontal tubular ; and when these means are employed 
for any length of time, the flue spaces become clogged. 

"We reply, therefore, to your second interrogatory, that, on the whole, we are 
compelled to consider the type of boiler used in these steamers as inferior to the 
horizontal tubular boiler which is generally used by other nations, and by this coun- 
try in the mercantile marine." 

******* *** 

"4. On the general design and arrangement of the machinery in the different 
cases, and whether, on the whole, all the conditions of the naval service being duly 
considered, there is any other arrangement in use that would give superior results ? 

"In reply to this interrogatory we have to report that the general design and ar- 
rangement of machinery for the screw steamers is inferior to that of other types in 
the following particulars: 1. Compactness. It occupies more cubical space than 
either the ordinary back-acting engine (this phrase objected to by Mr. Everett), or 



MONITORS AND ARMORED SHIPS. 505 

the direct-acting engine, either of which, with the same stroke, could have been 
gotten into these vessels. 2. Liability to derangement. It is more liable to de- 
rangement than either of those types, owing to the great number and weight of the 
moving parts, and comparative inaccessibility of some of them. 3. In reference to 
economy of fuel. The consumption of steam as applied to the propulsion of the 
vessel must be proportionally greater in these engines than in those of ordinary pro- 
portions, owing to the excessive weight of the reciprocating parts to be put in mo- 
tion at each alternation of movement, involving additional friction, and also the 
employment of such large steam ports, involving loss of steam even after allowing 
for the gain by free exhaust so obtained, as well as the expenditure of power due to 
great travel and friction of the valves. 4. Owing to the peculiar arrangement of 
the smaller pumps and of the valve gearing, they are more inaccessible for care and 
adjustment when in motion and for repairs either at sea or in port. Taking all 
these points into consideration, we believe, first, that the direct-acting engine pre- 
sents the greater number and amount of advantages for marine service in the navy, 
and can state that the space allotted for the machinery in these vessels would have 
permitted the introduction of the direct-acting engine in place of that adopted, 
having the same stroke of piston, a sufficient length of connecting-rod, and ample 
surface in the journals to bear the same maximum strain brought upon the recipro- 
cating parts without sacrificing any of the essential elements of a successful per- 
formance ; second, that the saving of cubic contents occupied in the vessel, due 
to such change of type, would have been not less than twenty per cent. ; and, 
third, that the employment of the proportions used by the best practice for the va- 
rious parts of these engines would have resulted in a saving of weight amounting 
to not less than sixty tons, involving reduced cost, other conditions being the same. 

"With regard to the paddle-wheel engines, we consider the general plan adopted 
as not open to serious objection, inasmuch as the space to be occupied in these ves- 
sels is of secondary importance. It affords the necessary accessibility for care and 
adjustment during operation, and for repairs at all times. It is not peculiarly liable 
to derangement, and has superabundant journal service. We object, however, to 
the weight of some of the parts of the engine proper, which, judged by the propor- 
tions used in the best practice, is excessive. This objection applies especially to the 
first paddle-wheel boats. In both classes, however, it is believed to be of importance, 
as involving additional displacement to carry it and increased cost of construction. 
We object also to the large proportions of the condensing apparatus (except the 
condensers proper in the second class of engines) as being in our opinion unneces- 
sary, and to the size of steam ports, valves, etc., about double that of the best prac- 
tice hitherto, on account of the loss of steam caused thereby. The overhanging 
wheels and their constructions are approved. We approve also of the adoption of 
single engines for vessels of this class." 

" 5. Whether, had the drawings and specifications of this machinery been sub- 
mitted to you before their construction, you would have objected to any thing in it 
as likely to render its performance in any way inferior to other machinery in use for 
the same purpose and under the same considerations ? 

"We should have objected to many of the points of arrangement and details in 
these plans and specifications, as giving results inferior to what might, in our opin- 
ion, have been obtained had changes been made in them." 



506 ADMINISTRATION OF THE NAVY DEPARTMENT. 

" G. You will please also give, in the event of your disapproving of all or any 
part of the machinery, the reasons therefor, and state what, in your opinion, it 
should have heen. 

" In compliance with this request, we have to state that we should have placed 
more power, hoth of engines and boilers, in the screw steamers, recognizing the great 
importance to naval steamers of having the capability to maintain continuously a 
high rate of speed when desired ; and believe that in both respects the power 
could have been proportionately increased by a change in type and detail — as in- 
dicated in previous replies — to the extent of at least one third more, without add- 
ing to the space occupied by the whole, reducing the coal space, or equaling the to- 
tal weight. 

"By such a change, obtained without sacrifice of room or displacement, a higher 
rate of speed would have been attainable ; while in ordinary cruising, both engines 
and boilers could have been worked at a less pressure of steam, and managed in a 
manner most conducive to economy of fuel and their greater durability. 

"We should have objected to certain points of detail and proportion, as indi- 
cated in our replies to previous interrogatories. A farther objection and proposed 
change is submitted by four members of the board in a subsequent part of this re- 
port. ********* 

"Objections to answer the first interrogatory by Messrs. Coryell and Wright, 
who object to so much of the foregoing answer as relates to the principle adopted 
for the valve gear used in the Juniata class of engines, for the reason that it will 
not allow of the proper motion of the steam valve for an engine working expansive- 
ly, in combination with a proper opening of ports for the exhaust ; in other words, 
all engines should have a separate valve and motion for working steam expansively. 
The type of valve motion used on the Iroquois, Wachusett, and vessels of that class, 
though not combining every thing desired for an efficient expansive gear, is in every 
respect superior to that in use in the Juniata class of engines." * * * 

"Addition to answer to sixth interrogatory by Messrs. Hibbard, Wright, Loring, 
and Coryell, who add to the foregoing answer by stating that they regard the diam- 
eter of the cylinders of the Juniata class of engines as too small to develop in the 
most economical manner the power of the steam that can be generated by the boil- 
ers, as they require the steam to be admitted at a pressure of thirty to thirty-five 
pounds per square inch above the atmosphere for about three fourths of the stroke, 
to develop their ordinary full working power. With large cylinders, fifty-four inches 
in diameter, cutting off the steam at about three eighths the stroke, and using the 
same pressure and volume of steam, would, in their opinion, develop more power 
from it, and at the same time, by cutting off a larger point, enable the engines to 
work for a limited time with a large excess of power in an emergency, or at full 
power with a lower pressure of steam, as would be very desirable in case the boilers 
were weakened by wear or other causes, or if the pressure of the steam became ac- 
cidentally lower, or if from leaking or other derangement of the fresh-water con- 
denser it became necessary to work the boilers with salt water, and that such in- 
creased size of the cylinders would not materially increase the cubic space occupied. 
The size of cylinders used do not in our opinion permit the best rate of expansion 
that the valve gear will give, except at a low rate of speed of the vessels." 



MONITORS AtfD ARMORED SHIPS. 507 

The Board make this important statement on page 97 : 

" It is true that the best screw vessels in the navy for speed and efficiency are 
provided with an independent cut-off apparatus ; but this superiority is not necessa- 
rily due to the use of an independent cut-off. We believe there are no vessels built 
for the Navy before the date mentioned [18G1] without an independent cut-off." 

Then we have on page 127 of the supplemental report this re- 
mark of the Board : 

"We did not, for example, in our report allude to one disadvantage of the form 
of boiler now used in the naval service, although it was fully discussed, namely, the 
impossibility in the gunboats or sloops, of reducing its height so that the crown of 
the boiler can be below the main load water-line of the vessel. This can be done 
by other forms of multitubular boiler, either horizontal or vertical, while the ordi- 
nary horizontal tubular somewhat occupies less height, when properly designed, to 
give the same effect." 

Now, the effect of having the steam machinery exposed in ac- 
tion was disastrously illustrated when the Sassacus was exploded 
in Albemarle Sound, and the Hatteras disabled by the Alabama 
in the Gulf of Mexico, by a single shot passing through a portion 
of their steam machinery. 

And then we have another significant fact on this point in the 
remark they make, that the engines differ from those of the best 
practical engineers. They were mere innovations. However they 
may be justified hereafter, they were against the opinion of the 
profession when adopted, and against the experience of the best 
vessels in the United States service as the commission of engineers 
report, and they are different from these vessels which now make 
the best time at sea under the ordinary conditions of the applica- 
tion of machinery to the propulsion of vessels. They were mere 
innovations — ideas that came across the head of the chief of the 
Bureau of Steam Engineering; and they, engines and boilers, 
stand condemned by this commission, which was summoned by 
the Department to pass its judgment upon them. 

On one innovation, made without experiment or any proposed 
advantage, the Board speak as follows : 

"Both in the naval and merchant marine large sums of money have been ex- 
pended in constructing elaborate machinery, especially required to accomplish long 
ranges of expansion. On the other hand, during the past two years, some twenty- 
five or thirty vessels (mostly in the navy) have been provided with machinery con- 
structed on a different theory, namely, that it was more economical to make the 
steam cylinders of such dimensions that a small range of expansion could be used. 

" We respectfully submit that a knowledge of the fact of which of these systems 
is the most economical would be productive of so great a moneyed economy to the 



508 ADMINISTRATION OF THE NAVY DEPARTMENT. 

government that we can not but earnestly recommend that you will authorize the 
necessary experiments to determine this question, particularly as an expenditure not 
to exceed from fifteen to twenty thousand dollars only would be required, which, in 
comparison to the importance of the subject, is insignificant." 

Then the Board advised experiments to test the relative values 
of the horizontal and vertical tubular boilers, chiefly out of defer- 
ence to the Department's partiality for the latter, which they had 
condemned in the form used by the Bureau of Engineering. This 
report was made in February or March, 1863, and it condemned 
every thing that had been done at that time, every engine that 
had then been placed by the Department in a naval vessel. We 
are told that these investigations are now going on, in the report 
of the Secretary to this session. The Bureau of Steam Engineer- 
ing informs us that now — that is to say in December, 1864, when 
the report came in, commissions were sitting to determine those 
two problems proposed for solution in February, 1863, and were 
carrying on their investigations in November and December, 1864, 
to advise the Department what course it should pursue in creating 
new engines. 

Now, what has been the course of the Department while that 
investigation was going on ? Why, sir, I hold here a report of 
the chief of the Engineer Bureau of the 28th of November, 1864, 
which, after eulogizing the form of boiler which that Board of 
Engineers condemned, and giving us his assurance that his sub- 
sequent experiments quite justify his opinion, condemned by the 
Board of Engineers, informs us that, on the 28th of November, 
1864, 

"A Board, consisting of the principal steam-engine builders of the country and 
the cbief of this bureau, is now experimenting with critical accuracy on two boilers 
of the respective types for the purpose of definitely determining their relative merits 
for the naval service under every variety of circumstance and of proportion. It is 
believed the results will be of the utmost importance to all engaged in the manu- 
facture and use of steam machinery. 

"Another Board, consisting of three members of the Franklin Institute, three of 
the Academy of Sciences, and three on the part of the Department, are now exper- 
imenting with the utmost precision on machinery devised by Mr. Horatio Allen, of 
the Novelty Iron Works, New York city, one of the Board, to determine by practical 
results the economy of using steam with different measures of expansion, under dif- 
ferent conditions of mechanism, pressure, and back pressure. It is believed these 
experiments will give a correct practical solution to a very vexed problem, and be 
of incalculable benefit." 

That is to say, experiments of vital moment proposed in Feb- 



MONITORS AND ARMORED SHIPS. 509 

ruary, 1863, to guide the Department in the expenditure of mil- 
lions, and to determine the value of the whole machinery of the 
navy, have been cleverly protracted from February, 1868, till 
November, 1864, that is, during twenty-one months, nearly two 
years ; and while this was going on, we are informed that the De- 
partment has solved those problems in its own sense ; and in the 
face of this report of the Board of Engineers, and its judgment 
upon the machinery of the Bureau, it has ordered machinery of 
its own condemned types to the amount of millions of money, for 
I can not tell how many vessels ! The statement of contracts for 
steam machinery made by the Bureau of Steam Engineering since 
the 1st of August, 1863, that is, six months after the report of the 
Board of Engineers, shows contracts for twenty-one engines at 
$400,000 each, four at $580,000 each, two at $600,000, and two 
at $700,000 each, amounting to about twelve millions of dollars ; 
all after August, 1863 ; all after the condemnation by the Board 
of Engineers ; all pending the experiments which were to determ- 
ine their structure ! In what year the last were ordered is per- 
haps not quite certain, for the dates are not very distinctly set 
forth ; but all seem to be in 1863. 

What I ask the attention of the committee to is the fact that a 
Board of Engineers, summoned by the Department, condemned all 
the machinery the Department had placed in any wooden vessel 
up to the date of its sessions, and that the Department, instead of 
changing its course, goes on and constructs machinery upon iden- 
tically the same principle, as the Bureau of Engineers informs us. 
I speak now upon the report ; and then, as if to add mockery to 
this abuse of the public confidence, they tell us that now, after the 
time which has elapsed between February and March, 1863, and 
November, 1864, they are diligently pursuing investigations to 
settle questions which they have practically solved by the expend- 
iture of millions of dollars upon work which has been condemned 
by a Board authorized by the Department itself more than a year 
ago, and pending experiments intended to determine some of the 
most vital points of the machinery ! If that is wise action, then 
let others explain it. If there are differences of opinion so grave 
as that, then it is time to stop until the problem is solved, and not 
say that, after having built a whole navy at such stupendous sac- 
rifice of money, they are now diligently pursuing investigations 
for the purpose of solving a problem which they have practically 



510 ADMINISTRATION OF THE NAVY DEPARTMENT. 

solved by this great expenditure. That is a trifling with the 
country which should bring down upon them the indignation of 
this House. And if no other fact existed, that should be a suffi- 
cient reason to surround the head of the Navy Department with 
responsible advisers, whose opinions he can not disregard, whose 
opinions he can not push away in the pigeon-holes of the Depart- 
ment, as he did those of the Board of Engineers, where they may 
lay until they were brought out after weeks of investigation by 
our committees, but who would command respect from the head 
of the Department, or bring down condign punishment upon his 
head if neglected. It is to prevent such an abuse of the public 
confidence as is shown by the report of the Board of Engineers on 
the one side, and the report of the Engineer Bureau on the other, 
that I have drawn the proposition I have offered ; and in drawing 
it I have embodied in it as nearly as I could, and as the system of 
our government would allow, the provisions which have, by the 
experience of other countries and our own, from time to time been 
found useful to guide and aid the discretion of the Secretary when 
novel ships or great expenditures on new forms of naval defense 
were about to be hazarded, and to prevent this great squandering 
of the public money. In my judgment it will be a guarantee 
of an efficiency of service hereafter such as we have never had 
heretofore. 

I have already detained the House longer than I intended. I 
merely wish to say now that, so far as I can get information from 
any source whatever, the speed of the engines placed in the naval 
vessels constructed by the Department on its type up to this time 
falls three miles short of what they ought to have attained accord- 
ing to the Board of Engineers. A defender of the navy has fur- 
nished a striking proof of this great failure. When the question 
was raised upon that subject in the newspapers some time ago, 
the statement that the screw sloops of the Department could not 
exceed between nine and ten knots drew out a reply from a dis- 
tinguished officer in the navy, who said that it was very far from 
being true that none of the vessels of the navy could go more 
than nine or ten miles an hour under steam continuously, under 
the conditions of the naval service — not running down the Poto- 
mac without armament, or coal, or ammunition, or water, or pro- 
visions, and in smooth water, but at sea. It is the only direct, au- 
thentic published statement that I have ever seen from any naval 



MONITORS AND ARMORED SHIPS. 5H 

officer respecting the speed of any of the vessels of the United 
States built by the present Department which carried their speed 
above ten miles an hour. But the contradiction is solved by not- 
ing the names of the vessels forming the exceptions. Captain 
Craven, the heroic officer who went down with the monitor Te- 
cumseh in Mobile Bay, is the officer referred to, and his card, in 
answer to the suggestion that none of the Department vessels 
would go more than ten knots an hour under naval conditions, 
stated that he had commanded both the Kearsarge and the Tus- 
carora, and that they could go thirteen knots an hour. But the 
Kearsarge and the Tuscarora are not provided with machinery built 
by the Department or the Bureau of Engineering, but they are two 
vessels of war which were duplicates in structure and machinery 
of the Iroquois, the Mohican, and the Seminole, vessels construct- 
ed by the last administration, whose engines are constructed on the 
'principle that the new Bureau of Engineering has condemned — prin- 
ciples which it has discarded in the construction of the new en- 
gines, but which prevailed in the structure of the old vessels of 
the United States Navy, and of the vessels constructed in navies 
abroad. And I say that this is evidence in corroboration of the 
fact that none of the vessels whose machinery is devised by the 
Bureau can approach the speed which it is said by the Board of 
Engineers ought to be attained, and can be attained, with proper 
machinery, under naval conditions for naval vessels. The num- 
ber of revolutions of the screw, not exceeding sixty or sixty-two 
a minute, and the pitch of the screw, limit the speed of the screw 
sloops to less than ten knots an hour, unless a vessel can go faster 
than her propeller; and that such is the limit appears officially 
by the report that the Monongahela, in rushing full speed against 
the Tennessee, made sixty-two revolutions, manifestly the utmost 
limit of her power ; and that they are under twelve knots an 
. hour is implied by the Board of Engineers assigning that as the 
desirable limit, while they condemn the machinery, and say it 
might, by change in type and detail, have in the screw steamers 
been increased in power to the extent of one third. It is plain 
they thought the speed of the sloop not over nine knots. The im- 
punity of the Alabama and her consorts for three years is the 
practical result ; while the official report adds to the confirmation 
by showing that of ninety steamers captured during the year, not 
over five or six were taken by vessels built on the Department 
plans. 



512 ADMINISTRATION OF THE NAVY DEPARTMENT. 

Now, sir, without going farther into detail upon this subject, for 
I desire to stop where official data stop, I submit that the course 
of the Department with reference to the iron-clads, and its course 
with reference to the construction of machinery, all other matters 
being laid aside, show the necessity of some supervising board, 
some advisory power beyond authority which is at the head of 
the Navy Department, and to secure to the nation the benefit of 
the money that it is now expending in the structure of vessels. 
We have spent already, sir, over $280,000,000 on our navy, and 
yet at this day there has been accomplished scarcely any thing 
which ought to be satisfactory to the nation, or which materially 
adds to its security. I trust, sir, that by the adoption of this 
amendment a security will be provided for the future, for noth- 
ing can remedy the squandering of the past. 

Messrs. Rice, Pike, and Griswold, of the Committee, and Mr. Blow, 
having opposed the amendment, Mr. Davis said on the 6th of February, 

Mr. Chairman, — Had the gentlemen of the Naval Committee 
treated the proposition I had the honor to present with ordinary 
fairness, or exhibited in the course of their discussion of it that 
they had read the bill and amendment which they rejected, and 
understood that which they attempted to induce the House not to 
adopt, I should not have indulged in a word of reply ; for, sir, no 
fact I have adduced from the public record of this or the last ses- 
sion has been controverted or can be controverted by them ; nor, 
indeed, if those facts stand, is there any reply possible to the con- 
siderations urged by me. But, instead of meeting the argument 
I addressed upon a measure introduced upon grave deliberation, 
and referred to that committee for its consideration now nearly a 
year ago, both honorable gentlemen commenced their observations 
by remarking on the personal feeling and temper of my remarks. 

Now, sir, whether that temper was that of a May morning or of • 
a November night scarcely affects the value of the measure before 
the House. Whether I am pleased with or disgusted with gen- 
tlemen who preside over the Navy Department is not an argu- 
ment either for or against the measure I presented. My wrath 
did not sink the light-draught monitors, and the puffs of the Bos- 
ton Advertiser can not float them. If the gentlemen meant to in- 
timate, for the purpose of weakening the weight of any observa- 
tion I made here, that the measure I introduced is prompted by 



MONITORS AND ARMORED SHIPS. 513 

any personal feeling relative to the gentlemen who control that 
Department, I desire to say it is their invention, and nothing else, 
which gives foundation to the suggestion. I have not the honor 
of an acquaintance with either of those gentlemen. I have nei- 
ther been refused, nor asked, nor received any favor at their hands, 
and that is more than the two gentlemen [Mr.Eice and Mr. Pike] 
upon the committee can say for themselves. 

If I am in ill temper, and that ill temper is to affect the judg- 
ment of the House upon the argument I presented, it is only fair 
to say — though I mention matters of this kind with great reluc- 
tance — that the devotion to the Department of the honorable gen- 
tlemen upon my right may be supposed equally to affect the 
weight of their arguments ; and so far as the gentleman upon my 
left [Mr. Griswold], who adduces his testimony to the efficiency 
of the machinery and the structure of the Dictator is concerned, 
I may be permitted to say that the gentleman, if I am not misin- 
formed, has had interest in the construction of the iron-clads which 
may naturally be supposed to warp his judgment upon that sub- 
ject at least as much as my disgust biases mine ; so that, when 
the collateral facts are made, I submit, be my temper what it 
might, my argument is entitled to weigh equally with the argu- 
ments of gentlemen on the other side, irrespective of the temper 
that dictated or pervaded them. 

But another step; and it is to the gentlemen I refer. He spoke 
about my inaccuracy touching the consideration of the bill before 
the committee, and said, if I understood him correctly, that it had 
been considered promptly by the committee after I had requested 
the honorable gentlemen and some others to have it considered, 
whether at the last session or the present session I do not remem- 
ber. When that consideration took place I do not know, and the 
honorable gentleman does. But if I was misled by the statement 
of the distinguished gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Spalding], a mem- 
ber of the committee, who, when I moved this amendment form- 
ally, said to the House, as an objection to its consideration, that it 
"is now undergoing investigation before that committee ," and if it was 
decided before that time, I was not at fault in supposing it had 
not been decided. If it was decided since that time, I am right 
in supposing that the judgment was made while my amendment 
was pending, in order to affect the judgment of the House unfa- 
vorably and unregularly upon it. 

Kk 



514 ADMINISTKATION OF THE NAVY DEPARTMENT. 

But how have the gentlemen treated the measure itself? From 
beginning to end as if I had introduced this bill to annex the 
British system of a Board of Admiralty to the organization of 
the Navy Department. There was no other ground of objection 
or point of observation made by either of those gentlemen, so far 
as I could understand them. I desire to say that gentlemen who 
are arguing from the Board of Admiralty of England against this 
bill do not know what that Board is, or they never have read or 
understood this bill. The Board of Admiralty is the Navy De- 
partment of England. The six lords administer the navy ; they 
do not advise a single head. They are the executive body itself, 
not a council to advise another head. It is formed upon the old 
system of the government of England, which is ministerial, by a 
board of ministers, and not by the nominal head, the king. The 
Board of Admiralty is the organization of the ministry in the ad- 
ministrative department of the navy. That is the peculiarity of 
the system. Against that peculiarity the objections to the Board 
of Admiralty in England are directed alone. It is that peculiar- 
ity which I do not propose to adopt, and it is upon this peculiarity 
of that Board that these gentlemen have argued here against that 
which I introduce. 

The gentleman who is chairman of the Naval Committee stated 
that a Board of Naval Commissioners was appointed under a law 
passed in 1815, and that was repealed, and the bureau system was 
adopted in 1842. The burden of his argument was that the Na- 
val Commissioners of 1815 was such a Board as I propose now. 
Why, Mr, Chairman, does not the gentleman understand the his- 
tory of the organization of the Department which he here repre- 
sents and attempts to defend? The Navy Commissioners of 1815 
were the ministerial organization of the Department, for which 
were substituted the present bureaus, now the ministerial portion 
of the Department, executing the instructions of the Secretary of 
the Navy. What I propose — and now, at least, I shall be able to 
make myself understood — what I propose is not to remove the 
bureaus, not to substitute any other organization to discharge 
their ministerial duties, nor to interfere with the free discretion of 
the Secretary, but to interpose, on the French system, between 
the administrative discretion of the Secretary and the ministerial 
obedience of the bureaus a council of naval officers, whose advice 
the Secretary may command on all matters, whose opinions he 



MONITORS AND ARMORED SHIPS. 515 

must take on some matters, but which, when taken, he is free to 
disregard. Is that intelligible? As the President has his cabi- 
net, so the Secretary shall have his advisers. I would have the 
Secretary, without restricting his executive discretion, surrounded 
by advisers of competent professional knowledge, who would pre- 
vent blunders, expose errors, and furnish light if the Secretary 
have only eyes ; or, if he had light, give him greater light. The 
weaker he is, the more he wants it ; the wiser he is, the more he 
will prize and profit by it. 

The very foundation of the American system of government is 
an executive head, with a council of advisers around him. In 
view of the great errors and blunders that have been committed 
by the present administration of the Navy Department, I endeav- 
or to apply that same system to the Secretary of the Navy so as 
to surround him with professional advisers who may save him 
from repeating the errors of the past by mere caprice, by mere 
blundering, or by mere carelessness or haste. If he had the genius 
of Napoleon Bonaparte he would need advice, and if he were as 
wise as Napoleon before empire crazed him he would seek and 
not decline it. Those who are familiar with the great history of 
the Consulate and Empire know that in his earlier and better 
days, when he exhibited greater administrative capacity than any 
man who had ruled France since the days of Eichelieu, he adopt- 
ed no great measure of war or peace, of diplomatic policy or in- 
ternal administration, until it had been debated fully, freely, and 
deliberately by his council around him. The fruits of that con- 
sultation appeared in the judgment which closed the sitting, and 
in the event which consolidated France and revolutionized Eu- 
rope. It was only when an insane ambition — as a smaller ambi- 
tion here leads people to discard advice and avoid professional 
advisers, and inflict on this land all the evils of personal rule — 
only when an insane ambition had lured him on to the conquest 
of Europe, and his projects would not stand discussion even in his 
own private councils, that the campaign of Eussia and the inva- 
sion of Spain were determined on, without consultation, in spite 
of remonstrances now sunk to whispers, on mere fancies of his own 
imagination ; and he followed them to his ruin. It is thus all 
merely personal government must end, and it is from mere per- 
sonal irresponsible rule the navy is now suffering. If Napoleon 
could take advice, certainly Mr. Welles should not be above it. 



516 ADMINISTRATION OF THE NAVY DEPARTMENT. 

If he needed counselors around him, I submit that Mr. Fox is not 
a sufficient counselor for the Secretary of the Navy. 

Now, what do I propose ? First, that professional officers shall 
be appointed by the President. Next, that they shall advise- the 
Secretary of the Navy on every matter relating to naval adminis- 
tration, naval legislation, and the application of the naval force in 
time of war. It does not compel him to follow, it gives him the 
privilege of taking the advice of this Board. But on the great 
subjects that involve vast expenditures, the organization of navy 
yards, the structure of new vessels, the forms of iron-clads, the 
adoption of new machinery, the pursuit of new investigations in 
new departments of inquiry, on these subjects the bill says, not 
that the Secretary shall be bound to come to the same conclusion 
with the Board, but that he shall come to no conclusion, and shall 
make no order, until he has taken the advice of this Board. Tell 
me what harm advice can do him. It does not divide the respons- 
ibility. It does not delay his judgment. It does not control his 
conclusions. It puts light around him, and then leaves him to 
take the way to ruin if he sees fit to do so, on his responsibility 
before the American people, with the advice which he has had, 
and which we have provided for him, lying printed beneath his 
eyes to condemn or to justify him. 

The honorable gentleman who heads the Naval Committee 
[Mr. Eice, of Massachusetts] has informed us that boards have 
been organized from time to time by the Navy Department for 
its assistance, and that that is done continually. Then, sir, if the 
Department, at its discretion, feels the necessity of advice, why 
should not the country have the benefit of the experience of men 
responsible to it, appointed under the law by the President and 
confirmed by the Senate, whose opinions shall stand before the 
country, instead of having a commission, packed for the occasion, 
responsible to no law and no person, but simply executing the 
Secretary's will or caprice? Why should we not have this 
Board, instead of one to be summoned, as in the case of the addi- 
tional expenses of the Dictator, for the purpose of revising the de- 
cision of another Board, and of coming to a conclusion more satis- 
factory to the Department — the results of their adverse judgment 
known only by accident, and after Congress, in ignorance of their 
findings, had improvidently ratified the reckless extravagance of 
the Department for "the honor and interest" of the government? 



MONITORS AND ARMORED SHIPS. 517 

The committee treat my observations on their hunt for a navy 
yard as an imputation on them. Nothing is farther from my 
meaning. My complaint at the loss of their services in the House 
was wholly playful ; but the argument which pointed my remark 
was sharp and direct, and that they evaded under cover of a per- 
sonal complaint. Gentlemen have treated this measure as an im- 
putation on the Committee. Perhaps they did not understand 
the point of my argument ; they did not answer it. It was that 
the Committee on Naval Affairs conceded, last session, the neces- 
sity of advice by constituting themselves a Board of Admiralty 
for the Secretary of the Navy. If they thought he needed ad- 
vice, and that they were competent to advise him on the choice 
of navy yards, is not a board of naval officers as competent and as 
necessary to give advice upon the great questions of naval admin- 
istration ? 

But, in the pursuit of their argument, derived from the experi- 
ence of the Board of Admiralty in England, the honorable gen- 
tlemen brought themselves, I think, into divers inconsistencies. 
They even attempted to play on our prejudices in favor of Amer- 
ican genius. They are not more American than I am. They at- 
tempted to awaken the susceptibilities of this House by imputa- 
tions that I had depreciated the enterprise of the American navy. 
Mr. Chairman, every officer of the American navy knows that I 
am pleading his cause ; and if I do not give the names of officers 
of the first position in the navy who hang breathless on the pas- 
sage of the measure, it is because the Assistant Secretary of the 
Navy says that courts-martial are organized to convict. 

But, sir, let us pursue the argument on the question of the En- 
glish Board of Admiralty. Notwithstanding this perpetual Amer- 
ican gasconade about the performances of the Monitor in Hamp- 
ton Boads, which, we are told, according to English authority 
quoted here, has made all their ships useless, neither France nor 
England has built a single monitor ; and that was in 1862, and 
we are now in 1865. Bussia has built thirteen monitors, we arc 
boastfully told. When did Bussia become a naval power whose 
opinions could instruct Americans on a question of naval arma- 
ment? Sir, I may have said bitter things in the course of my 
observations, but I said nothing so bitter and so insulting to the 
American navy or the Navy Department as that. 

But the honorable gentleman from Maine [Mr. Pike] informs 



518 ADMINISTRATION OF THE NAVY DEPARTMENT. 

us that English authorities declare "that all their broadside ves- 
sels of the iron-clad class, like the Warrior, will have to be built 
over." Yet there they stand unchanged. England still adheres 
to her system of broadside iron-clads as tenaciously as she holds 
to the " exploded" Board of Admiralty. I suppose that we shall 
next be told that England is no naval power, because she has 
"changed neither the organization of her Navy Department nor 
the structure of the iron-clads that she has built. 

The honorable gentleman has cited another authority, Sir 
Charles Napier, one of the Napiers so proverbial for their quar- 
rels in both branches of the English service. But what does he 
complain of? Unfair promotion and lack of responsibility. Will 
the gentleman ask any officer of the navy of the United States 
whether he thinks the promotions in our navy are fair? That 
is a most unfortunate topic for the honorable gentleman just 
now, that the Department has organized the Board of promo- 
tions, on which its malice has excluded the officers of the South 
Atlantic Squadron from the representation accorded every other 
squadron. Where is any responsibility? Who is responsible 
for any thing that is done ? For we have a head that does noth- 
ing, and the active power under him, irresponsible, that does ev- 
ery thing. 

Then the same honorable gentleman quoted a high English 
authority as saying that it would be an outrage to send men into 
action in wooden vessels. Why does he cast such an imputation 
upon the head of the Navy Department, that sent Farragut to 
Mobile and Porter to Fort Fisher in wooden vessels, and is now 
building a whole fleet of them, with engines alone costing $400,000 
and $600,000 each? 

Bat a word on the question of iron-clads abroad. The "Amer- 
ican idea," as it is called, embodied in the Monitor and the Dic- 
tator, has hitherto produced nothing that will cross the ocean. 
The New Ironsides, that will cross it, is not on that American idea, 
but a copy of the Warrior. And, whatever opinions of maga- 
zines or officers the gentleman from Maine may quote, it is not 
true either that England or France has adopted the American 
idea, or abandoned as failures the Warrior or La Gloire. Against 
those hasty suggestions I quote and prefer the opinion of an 
American naval constructor, whom the gentleman from Maine 
so justly eulogized, the great naval constructor of the United 



MONITORS AND ARMORED SHIPS. 51 9 

States, Lenthall, to whom we are indebted for our great superi- 
ority in the structure of our wooden vessels. He does not think 
that the iron-clads of either England or France are a failure, but 
does think that we have nothing to oppose them. Here are his 
words : 

" For the protection of our coasts and harbors we are probably well prepared ; 
but we have only three vessels that can pretend to cope with the sea-going iron- 
clad vessels of European nations, and these have not yet been tried. It is a prob- 
lem to be yet resolved whether a large steam vessel, with her deck a foot or two 
above water, and without sails, can be effective and use her guns as a cruising 
ship. Experience has shown that as ships increase in dimensions and weight there 
must be a certain relative portion above the water— that is, the height of the guns 
from the water should be increased ; but this may, to some extent, be modified by 
making sacrifices in some other qualities. 

"The accounts we have of the performances of the iron-clad European ves- 
sels, if to be relied on, show that the elevated position of their armor-plating has not 
seriously affected the motion of the vessels, and some of them are represented as 
being easier than ordinary vessels. Their large dimensions have much influence in 
this ; but our principal harbors do not permit us to have so great a draught of wa- 
ter as European vessels have, which is stated to be from twenty-six to twenty-seven 
feet." 

Now, sir, with reference to the iron-clad navies of France and 
England, abandoned upon the mere rumor of the impossible Dic- 
tator, let me read again : 

"Until such time as it becomes the policy of the government to build iron-armed 
vessels for sea service — and, whenever commenced, it will require some years to 
have them in sufficient number to keep an enemy from our coast — we must have re- 
course to plating wood vessels, of which the first cost may appear less, though it is 
certain to be more expensive in the end. 

"Unless we have armored sea-going ships" — 

not Monitors, not Dictators, not Dunderbergs, but armed sea-going 
ships — 

"we must give up the expectation of engaging our foes on the ocean, and must 
limit our operations to attacks on their commerce with fast and light-armored 
vessels." 

That is the judgment of our great naval constructor upon the 
extent to which the American idea of monitors has affected the 
sea-going iron-clads of Europe. He declares that we must go to 
work and build iron-clads of the same class, if we contemplate 
meeting them on the ocean in battle array. 

I will not repeat what I quoted from Admiral Porter about 
the New Ironsides — the only vessel of that kind in the navy — 



520 ADMINISTRATION OF THE NAVY DEPARTMENT. 

the best lie "ever saw for aggressive purposes, the counterpart of 
the Warrior ; so that the Warrior class can not be a failure, if she 
is not. But I can not refrain from invoking against the Depart- 
ment and the gentleman from Maine the judgment of Dahlgren, 
who went to Charleston to do impossibilities, and staid there two 
years without accomplishing them ; who went there to show that 
monitors could take forts, and has taken none. Though he was 
pledged by his appointment to a judgment in favor of the admin- 
istration wherever it was possible, his scientific judgment could 
not be so deluded as to overlook the great power of this form of 
vessels. He ventures no opinion on the monitor form for sea- 
going cruisers, apologetically refuses a judgment on the general 
merits of iron-clads of that class, but gives the palm of superiority 
for aggression to the form which the gentleman from Maine sup- 
poses the monitors have superseded. 

" The Ironsides is a fine, powerful ship. Her armor has stood heavy battering 
very we'll, and her broadsides of seven eleven-inch guns and one eight-inch rifle has 
always told with' signal effect when opened on the enemy. Draught of water about 
fifteen and a half to sixteen feet. Speed six to seven knots, and crew about four 
hundred and forty men. 

"Just as they are, the Ironsides is capable of a more rapid and concentrated fire, 
which, under the circumstances, made her guns more effective than the fifteen-inch 
of the monitors." 

He, pledged by his appointment to a judgment in favor of the 
administration of the Navy Department, as far as it is possible 
to bend his scientific judgment to meet the expectations of the 
Department, can not be so used as to put out of sight the great 
power of this form of vessel, or to venture an opinion in favor of 
monitors beyond the special circumstances of war. He says this 
corroborates in every particular the statement of Admiral Porter 
read by me, that that vessel, constructed on. that model, came more 
perfectly up to his idea of those intended for aggression than any 
other he had ever seen. 

Now, sir, I agree with the honorable gentlemen of the commit- 
tee that we can not adjust these conflicting authorities. But here 
stands the great fact, that while the great clamor across the water 
exaggerates the effect produced by the attack of the Monitor upon 
the Merrimac, it has not changed the course of European struc- 
ture; it has not produced a single monitor in the ports of France 
or England; and the judgment of our naval officers is in conflict 



MONITORS AND ARMORED SHIPS. 521 

with the opinions quoted from abroad, responsible or irresponsi- 
ble, by the gentleman from Maine, but conforms to the official 
judgments of France and England, that vessels of the Ironsides 
class are neither a failure, nor inferior to the American idea em- 
bodied in the monitors. I prefer the judgment of American naval 
officers to the judgment of English naval officers, and still more 
to the clamor of English magazines ; and in any legislation for 
the benefit of the navy I should consult their judgment, and not a 
criticism of the English Board of Admiralty, which is not analo- 
gous to the one I propose. Arguing from one to another is mere- 
ly for the purpose of misleading the judgment of the House, or be- 
cause gentlemen did not understand the bill they are criticising. 

Now, Mr. Chairman, I do not contemplate following either of the 
gentlemen through their arguments, in which they evaded every 
thing that was to be answered, and controverted many things 
which were not asserted. But I desire to say, when my honora- 
ble friend on my right [Mr. Kice, of Massachusetts] spoke of the 
swiftness of the Eutaw — as if that in the least degree controverted 
my statements in reference to war vessels of the navy, and not to 
those river boats, as I termed them — he was introducing a topic 
I had not touched. I did not mean to say one word in respect 
to the speed of those vessels, because I considered them set out of 
the account as naval vessels. But the honorable gentleman must 
not suppose that I can allow to pass his statement of the perform- 
ance of this vessel in smooth river water, without her provisions, 
without her ammunition — I do not know whether she had her 
armament — certainly without her full load of coal, under none of 
the conditions of a vessel going to sea, subjected to no collision 
with the waves, as if I accepted that as a test of the power of the 
same vessel at sea. 

Mr. Bice, of Massachusetts. Docs the gentleman want to hear 
the report of Admiral Porter in reference to sea -going of that 
vessel ? 

Mr. Davis. The report will show what I state to be correct; 
but no form of machinery of a paddle-wheel steamer can be pro- 
tected, and therefore none of these vessels are war vessels. 

But, sir, what I meant to refer to now, though not covered by 
my former remarks, is this : that it will appear that after the ex- 
plosion of the Chenango'in New York Harbor, killing and wound- 
ing nobody can tell how many of our sailors, an investigation took 



522 ADMINISTRATION OF THE NAVY DEPARTMENT. 

place before the Coroner, who, after a full investigation upon the 
evidence, stated the result of the evidence to the jury ; and it went 
to show conclusively that the boilers placed in this vessel, and 
others of her class, which were condemned by the Board of En- 
gineers summoned by the Navy Department were so liable, by 
their peculiar structure, to exhaust the water in the boiler, that it 
was dangerous to run the vessel with open ports or full power. 
And that was proved by the officers of the vessel themselves. 

I now send to the Clerk to be read an extract from that inves- 
tigation. 

The Clerk read as follows : 

"It is apparent that the engineer corps of the navy, as well as the persons whose 
plans are involved, have a deep interest in assigning some other cause than low- 
water, since, if it were low, it must have been so either from the carelessness of en- 
gineers, or from inherent defects in the organization which baffled the ordinary skill 
of such persons as had the machine in charge ; yet no attempt has been made to 
explain away the melted lead, or to reconcile its presence with the fact that there 
was enough water in the boiler. And as this is the ordinary cause of explosion, it 
would seem consequently the true one here, particularly since no evidence of any 
sort has been produced to substitute any other cause ; and we are left to the mere 
suggestion, without proof, that possibly the braces might have been taken out by 
Mr. Cahill and not replaced, or possibly the cold-water test, which experience has 
shown to be infallible, has in this case proved a snare. Unfortunately there are 
other facts, which point out very clearly the existence of an organic disease in these 
vessels, requiring the utmost vigilance to guard against, the presence of which is 
abundantly proved. A number of these vessels are just now coming out, and it so 
happened that on Saturday, the 16th, the day after this explosion, the Pautuxent, 
having been run for ninety-six hours at the dock, was taken out on a trial trip from 
Providence. In the course of the run it became necessary to shut off the steam 
from the engine from some cause, and thus the fact appeared that the water, which 
had seemed to be abundant in the gauges, was low. Mr. Baker, an experienced 
engineer, who sat up and ran the engine on her ninety-six hours' trial, at once had 
the fires drawn from the furnaces as a measure of safety, the necessity of which, 
under the circumstances, Mr. Sewell admitted to ) - ou when on the stand ; and it 
was found that the steam-pump required twenty-two minutes to resupply the boiler 
with the water found wanting, although the gauges had given no warning of its ab- 
sence. But for Mr. Baker this accident would have probably had its counterpart ; 
and so convinced of the danger of the machine was Mr. Baker, that he refused to 
come to New York in the vessel unless he had the control given him ; and he has 
told us these facts, and sworn to the danger. 

"On the Chenango, the experienced engineers who ran the engine at the dock 
have told us that they considered their lives in danger from the liability to low 
water, and so convinced were they of it that they refused to open wide the throttle 
valve, though the United States engineers who were present insisted that the con- 



MONITORS AND ARMORED SHIPS. 523 

tract required the engine to be run wide open. Mr. Smith, the engineer who erect- 
ed and ran the engine of the Metacomet, another of the same class, has proved here 
that the water could only be kept in her boilers by so setting the valves that when 
those valves were ordered by Mr. Sewell to be set so as to open wider, and the ves- 
sel was run from the shop to the navy yard, the water worked so that the valves 
had to be put back to the original position, which was done by himself at the navy 
yard, under orders from the chief engineer of the ship. The drawings of these en- 
gines have been produced before us, and the measurements made of the cubic feet 
of vacant space which existed in these cylinders between the valves when they are 
closed and the piston when at the extreme end of the cylinder nearest the closed 
valves, and it appears that these spaces are great enough to hold more than sixteen 
hundred pounds of water at a revolution before they will be filled so as to arrest the 
motion of the piston as it approaches the end of the cylinder, and compel the open- 
ing of the relief valves, which are placed in each end of the cylinder to prevent the 
destruction of the engine by the confinement of the solid water in the cylinder ; yet 
it appears here that even more than this quantity of water would at times come 
over from the boiler at a revolution, and that these self-acting relief valves had to 
be opened constantly by hand, to permit the escape of this enormous quantity of 
water more freely than it could be voided by the self-acting valves. When it is 
considered that only about nine pounds of water in the shape of steam are needed 
to make the ordinary revolution of these engines, and that at times they draw even 
more than three quarters of a ton of water at a revolution, it is very easy to show 
how the boilers might be robbed of their water in a very few minutes, and the atten- 
tion of an ordinary man be eluded. 

"The coal burned by the Chenango on her trial has been proved, and the amount 
of steam which that coal produced has been measured on the indicator diagrams 
which were taken on the trials, by which it is proved that in the form of steam these 
boilers only evaporate from three to four pounds of water to the pound of coal, 
whereas if they did not use up the heat by carrying it off from the boiler in hot 
water, they would evaporate seven or eight pounds of water into steam ; and it is tes- 
tified to here, and the calculations show upon the indicator diagrams themselves, 
that these engines must have been working out of the boilers, in water, on an aver- 
age, during the ninety-six hours of the trial, about six times as much hot water as 
steam. Of the accuracy of such calculation, based upon comparing the weight of 
coal burned with the cubic feet of steam used by the engine, you are perhaps better 
judges than I am ; but it is to be remarked that these calculations have been on the 
table for several days challenging contradiction, and that they are not disputed. It 
is farther proved here that a considerable number of these vessels, exactly like the 
Chenango, have been recently built and tried, and that they are now awaiting orders 
for sea ; yet no witness has appeared before us to say that any of the other of these 
vessels have operated differently from those whose performance has been proved ; 
although there is no want of proof that when these boilers are arranged with a high 
steam space above the ends of the tubes, and a steam chimney, they do not work 
out their water. It would have been much more instructive to us if the engineers 
who have run so many of these low-roofed boilers had been produced, instead of 
those whose only experience has been with boilers not liable to that difficulty. 



524 ADMINISTRATION OF THE NAVY DEPARTMENT. 

: 'It is not very surprising, perhaps, that among the great number of vessels used 
by the United States and placed in the hands of young men who have had but little 
experience, and who are employed when there is a scarcity of engineers, on account 
of the great demand for the services of such men suddenly made by the navy, that 
an explosion should occur at some time ; and if the machinery were of the ordinary 
kind, the accident would excite no unusual interest. But when it occurs on ma- 
chinery peculiar in its construction, and which had been condemned as inferior by 
an official board of the most eminent engineers in the country; and when it appears 
that those peculiarities have so exhibited their dangerous qualities as to alarm prac- 
tical and scientific men, and to induce them to foretell an accident of this kind ; 
and when we find these peculiarities existing on a greater number of other vessels 
just coming into use, upon which the lives of our fellow-citizens are to be intrusted, 
then it is of serious consequence, and demands of us to raise a voice of warning in 
time to prevent any more such horrors as we have witnessed. Our brave men, 
who are willing to expose their bosoms to the enemy's shot, ought not to be subject- 
ed to the chances of a horrible deatli at the hands of their own friends, and in their 
own floating homes." 

Mr. Davis, of Maryland. So much for the boilers of the double- 
enders. 

Two gentlemen of the Naval Committee have made great com- 
plaint that I imposed upon them last year a burden too heavy to 
be borne in the resolution of inquiry I introduced relative to 
steam machineiy. Mr. Chairman, when I referred that resolution 
to the Naval Committee, I thought I was paying them the highest 
compliment I could bestow, for I supposed I was sending a res- 
olution to a committee which, from its connection with the De- 
partment, would have the best means possible of information, and 
from their devotion to the interest of the navy would prosecute 
their inquiry with energy and thoroughness, and give us the full 
benefit of their judgment. It related to the same matter investi- 
gated in part by the Board of Engineers organized by the Depart- 
ment in 1863, and disregarded by the Department. It was intend- 
ed to save the ruin of the machinery of the navy, to bring it to 
the test of science and knowledge ; and the topics which were to 
be inquired into could have been inquired into effectually as well 
in the course of two weeks as in the time which has elapsed from 
the day that resolution was brought in down to the day the com- 
mittee brought in their report about a week ago. There was a 
few topics, and only a few, requiring investigation, which the ex- 
amination of half a dozen engineers would have settled almost 
immediately, and the Department and this House would have had 
the results of this investigation upon that subject in time to act 
upon it 



MONITORS AND ARMORED SHIPS. 525 

But, on the contrary, what do we find ? The stupendous dili- 
gence of the gentlemen of that committee had absorbed all their 
leisure time from the day of the reference of the resolution down 
to the day, I think, before the motion made by me to append this 
amendment to the Navy Bill. An immense mass of testimony — 
twenty hundred pages — was introduced, which nobody can possi- 
bly read, which nobody can possibly consider. Their report 
came here, and has not yet been printed. It is worth now sub- 
stantially, no matter how wise or correct the resolution to which 
the committee came, just as much as the paper upon which it will 
be printed, because during the time that the investigation was 
being carried on the Department had been building the very ma- 
chinery that it was intended to test, and correct, and examine. 
Just as the Department has kept an investigation going on to 
verify the results of the engineers appointed in February, 1863, 
still diligently at work in November, 1864, and all the time, the 
Department, since February, 1863, has been building the ma- 
chinery ; so that, without its being intended to have that effect 
by the gentleman making that investigation, exactly the same 
result has been accomplished — that is to say, the government 
does not get the advantage of that investigation at all ; but, while 
the investigation has been lumbering on, every machine-shop in 
the country has been ringing with the construction of the very 
machinery which is in question. In a word, both investigations 
have been a mere screen to the Department, giving impunity to 
its gross abuse of the public confidence. 

Mr. Ganson. I would ask the gentleman if it would not be a 
more direct and reliable mode of obtaining information to have 
the head of the Naval Department upon this floor ? 

Mr. Davis, of Maryland. I answer that question with very great 
pleasure. If the information were in the head of the Department, 
I would say yes. (Laughter.) 

Mr. Ganson. I would ask the gentleman if he has found that 
it is out ? (Laughter.) 

Mr. Davis, of Maryland. I fear the gentleman does not give 
me credit for as much acuteness as I flattered myself I possessed. 
I had found that out long ago. (Laughter.) 

I take leave of this digression. 

Sir, I submit that this measure must be determined on its mer- 
its. Gentlemen can not escape responsibility before the country 



526 ADMINISTRATION OF THE NAVY DEPARTMENT. 

by saying that I proposed it out of ill temper; nor that a vote for 
it might disturb their relations with the Department; nor that 
their appointments might be interfered with ; nor that it might 
diminish their capacity to serve their constituents with the head 
of the Department, whom the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Blow] 
eulogized so strenuously, I take it, in order to procure favor for 
his navy yard at Carondelet. These arguments can not support 
them before the country, and they are dangerous arguments to 
go into a political contest on. I ask a vote upon the measure I 
propose, not upon my disgust at the Department ; I ask the vote 
upon the public considerations which must determine the judg- 
ment of the country that the measure is right or wrong. I ask 
gentlemen to say whether they think the Navy Department has 
been managed so during this war that no advice can improve it. 
I ask whether they are content that the American commerce 
shall have been swept from the ocean by five rebel privateers, 
with six hundred cruisers in our navy to catch and destroy them. 
I ask them if they think that American commerce can live if 
this is what we call an energetic and wise management of the 
Navy Department. If we give the navy a chance to live, and 
a voice in its own preservation, we may rescue our commerce 
from destruction ; and when we are called upon to meet a grand 
naval power on the ocean, we shall not be driven to imitate the 
plundering warfare of the rebels, and, shunning our armed ene- 
mies, go mousing over the ocean for their defenseless commerce, 
but, like a great power, meet our foes in arms, and dictate terms 
of peace on the water as well as on the land. When gentlemen 
shall take steps to do that, America will be a power ; but as long 
as Congress will not assert its supremacy over the Departments, 
and prescribe such organization of them as will give this nation 
the benefit of its resources, so long as Congress stops to inquire 
what the Departments wish instead of imposing on them what 
the interest of the nation requires, we will be powerless before the 
nations of the world. 

Mr. Chairman, I wish to say that I am here to-day pleading the 
cause of the American navy against the Navy Department. I 
am saying what four out of five of the officers of the navy would 
say had they a voice in this House. I say what the ablest and 
leading men of the navy would say to-day through the newspa- 
pers, were it not that the fear of exposure makes the Department 



MONITORS AND ARMORED SHIPS. 527 

despotic. Gentlemen quote here the opinions of the officers of 
the British navy against the administration of their navy ; but 
who in our navj r dare say any thing against our Navy Depart- 
ment? Have we not seen one of the most distinguished officers 
of our navy, Admiral Wilkes, for controverting statements in the 
report of the Department seriously affecting his honor as an offi- 
cer, dragged before a court? Was that court organized " to con- 
vict," in the language of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy? 
He was dragged before a court for vindicating himself and his 
own administration of the squadron under his command, and sub- 
jected to three years' suspension from service — a cruel and dis- 
graceful persecution, such as has never before tarnished the ad- 
ministration of the American navy. Sir, this system of tyranny 
in the Department deprives the country of the benefit of the opin- 
ion, and advice, and judgment of the officers of the navy upon the 
structure and organization of the American navy. They are al- 
ways ready to risk their lives and shed their blood on any thing 
that will float, but they shrink from advising the country for the 
benefit of the navy at the expense of a trial by a court organized 
to convict. Let them have a voice in the making of the vessels 
they are to navigate ; let them have a voice in the selection of the 
artillery they are to use ; let them have a voice in advising where 
they shall be sent. Had this been done, the Alabama's career 
would have been shorter and less disastrous. The coal depots 
and other necessities of navigation, the lines of commercial transit, 
the passes of the seas pointed out where the rebel cruisers must 
go from any given point, and any competent board could have 
devised a plan to meet and destroy them. Under the spasmodic 
guesswork by which the Alabama was pursued by this Depart- 
ment for four years, our commerce was swept from the ocean, 
sent to the bottom, or driven under foreign flags. Eebel cruisers 
burnt our ships not merely on distant seas, but almost within 
sight of the American coast; and then the Department tele- 
graphed to the navy yards, and all the newspapers were filled 
with eulogies of the marvelous diligence of the Department in 
setting vessels afloat to catch the rebel cruisers. The seas swarm- 
ed with vessels sent to the spot where the burning took place, and 
came back to report that the rebel cruisers were not there, and 
that nothing was found but the ashes of the conflagration. That 
system, sir, is one which could not have existed had there been 



528 ADMINISTRATION OF THE NAVY DEPARTMENT, ETC. 

competent professional advisers around the Secretary. His own 
patriotism ; Lis feeling for his country's cause ; the vain clamor of 
New York merchants ; their cry to him to spare their commerce, 
would have compelled him to listen, if the law had only clothed 
a board of officers with the right to speak, free from the danger 
of courts-martial organized to convict. It is that great defi- 
ciency that I am now trying to remedy. I am not influenced by 
any estimate of the personal value of the present Secretary, or 
of any other Secretary of the Navy. Be he as respectable as he 
may, be he as able and upright as he may, be he as honest and 
efficient as he may, I would not waste five minutes of the pre- 
cious time of this House in eulogizing or condemning him. I 
look beyond men to measures. I look beyond the head of the 
Department/ to the great country which that Department repre- 
sents. I look beyond the brief and flitting moments of his offi- 
cial life, now rapidly drawing to a close — if the prayer of every 
naval officer can be heard — to the day when the American nation 
will have to vindicate its power before the nations of the world 
now insidiously seeking our ruin, not by stealthy depredations 
on unarmed traders, but with a navy bearing proudly the banner 
of the republic over the seas, worthy to meet in arms the armed 
foes of the thirty millions of united Americans whose freedom 
and empire it guards, and able to prove on some great historic 
day that the republic can neither be torn asunder by internal dis- 
sensions nor browbeaten by the coalesced monarchies of Europe. 
(Applause on the floor.) 



RECONSTRUCTION OF THE REBEL STATES. 

On the 21st of February, 18G5, the bill for reconstructing the govern- 
ments in the States lately in rebellion, reported from the joint commit- 
tee on that subject, was under consideration in the House. Various 
amendments were offered, proposing that senators and representatives 
should not be received from those States until Congress should first 
declare that a just local government had been organized therein, and 
such State entitled to representation in Congress, or until a Constitu- 
tion had been adopted, guaranteeing to all persons freedom and equal 
rights before the law. A motion was then made to strike out the en- 
acting clause of the bill. The bill, as reported by Mr. Davis from the 
committee, pi'ovided for the appointment of a provisional governor by 
the President in eleven States declared in rebellion, who were to carry 
out in those States, by the military aid of the United States, the provi- 
sions of the act. It provided for the assessment and collection of taxes 
from the year next preceding the overthrow of the recognized State gov- 
ernment ; for the complete freedom — in fact, enforced by United States 
authority — of all persons heretofore held to labor; for the enrollment of 
all white male citizens over twenty-one of such States, with a view to 
the election of a Legislature, when the majority of such citizens should 
take the oath prescribed, and not before ; and the reconstruction, through 
such Legislature, of its relations with the federal government. 

Various substitutes and amendments were proposed, and finally, in 
lieu of the bill, another was offered by the committee, providing that all 
citizens of the United States of the age of twenty-one years (omitting the 
words white residents of the -State), and all such honorably discharged 
from the military or naval service of the United States, together with 
the loyal citizens enrolled as aforesaid, and who shall take and subscribe 
the oath of allegiance to the United States, shall be electors, and may 
vote for delegates for the Convention (to restore the relations of the 
State), but excluding therefrom any person who held any office under 
the rebel usurpation, and from voting also at such election. 

Upon this bill and amendments offered, Mr. Davis closed the debate, 
on the 21st of February, 18G5, as follows : 

Mr. Speaker, — I merely rise to state the case for the House. 
If I can find voice enough to do that, I shall have accomplished 
as much as I expect. 

Ll 



> 



530 RECONSTRUCTION OF THE REBEL STATES. 

The bill, which is now the test to which amendments are pend- 
ing, is the same*-bill which received the assent of both houses of 
Congress at the last session, with the following modifications to 
suit the tender susceptibilities of gentlemen from Massachusetts : 
1st, the sixth section, declaring rebel officers not citizens of 
United States, has been stricken out ; 2d, the taxation clause has 
been stricken out ; 3d, the word " government" has been inserted 
before " trial and punishment" to meet the refined criticisms of 
the two gentlemen from Massachusetts, who suppose that penal 
laws could be in force, and operative, when the penalties were 
forbidden to be enforced ; that discriminating laws could survive 
the declaration that there should be no discrimination between 
different persons in trial and punishment. There has been one 
section added to meet the present aspect of public affairs ; that 
section authorizes the President, instead of pursuing the method 
prescribed in the bill in reference to the States where military 
resistance shall have been suppressed, in the event of the legis- 
lative authority under the rebellion in any rebel State taking the 
oath to support the Constitution of the United States, annulling 
their confiscation laws, and ratifying the amendment proposed by 
this Congress to the Constitution of the United States, before mil- 
itary resistance shall be suppressed in such State, to recognize 
them as constituting the legal authority of the State, and direct- 
ing him to report those facts to Congress for its assent and ratifi- 
cation. 

With these modifications, the bill, which is now the test for 
amendment, is the bill which was adopted by this House at the 
last session. 

I shall not reflect upon the gentlemen of this House so far as 
to go into any argument to prove its authority to do what this 
bill proposes to do ; its vote of the last session for this bill, word 
for word, is the sufficient proof of the right of this House to 
adopt it. 

It is only the House itself that can reverse that judgment, and 
impeach the assertion of its own powers. Nor need I trouble 
myself to answer the arguments of the gentlemen who in the last 
session voted for this bill, who, in the quiet and repose of the in- 
tervening period, have criticised in detail the language, and, not 
stopping there, have found, in its substance, that it essentially vio- 
lates the principles of republican government, and sanctions the 



RECONSTRUCTION OF THE REBEL STATES. , 531 

enormities of the laws with which the existence of slavery has 
covered and defiled the statutes of every rebel State. 

That these discoveries should have been made since the vote 
of last session, is quite as remarkable as that they should have 
been overlooked before that vote. But they were neither over- 
looked before, nor discovered since. The vote was before a pend- 
ing election. It is the will of the President that has been discov- 
ered since. 

It is not at all surprising, Mr. Speaker, that the President, hav- 
ing failed to sign the bill passed by the whole body of his sup- 
porters by both houses at the last session of Congress, and having 
assigned, under the pressure of events, but without the authority 
of the law, reasons, good or bad, first for refusing to allow the bill 
to become a law, and therefore usurping power to execute parts 
of it as law, while he discarded other parts which interfered with 
possible electoral votes, those arguments should be found satis- 
factory to some minds prone to act upon the winking of au- 
thority. 

The weight of that species of argument I am not able to esti- 
mate. It bids defiance to every species of reply. It is that subtle, 
pervading epidemic of the time that penetrates the closest argu- 
ment as spirit penetrates matter that diffuses itself with the at- 
mosphere of authority, relaxing the energy of the strong, bending 
down the upright, diverting just men from the path of rectitude, 
and submitting the will and favor of the power for the will and 
interest of the people as the rule of legislative action. 

It is an evil which can be remedied only by the people of the 
United States in the selection of their representatives ; and when 
they send representatives here of stuff impenetrable to that subtle 
essence, then reason and not the executive wishes will eliminate 
them on the merits and necessity of legislative measures. Till 
then I despair of reaching the source of their conduct. 

All I desire now to do is to state the case, and predict results 
from one course to the other. The course of military events 
seems to indicate that possibly by the 4th of next July, probably 
by December, organized and armed rebellion will cease to lift its 
brazen head in the land. 

Disasters may intervene, errors or weaknesses may prolong the 
conflict, the proverbial chances of war may interpose their ca- 
prices to defer the national triumph, but events now point to the 



532 RECONSTRUCTION OF THE REBEL STATES. 

near approach of the end. But whether sooner or later, when- 
ever it comes, there is one thing that will assuredly accompany 
it. If this bill do not become a law, when Congress again meets, 
at our door, clamorous and dictatorial, will be sixty-five repre- 
sentatives from the States now in rebellion, and twenty-two sen- 
ators, claiming admission, and, upon the theory of the honorable 
gentleman, entitled to admission, beyond the power of argument 
to resist it ; for peace will have been restored, there will be no 
armed power but that of the United States, there will be quiet, 
and votes will be polled under the existing laws of the State, in 
the gentleman's views. 

Are you ready to accept that consequence ? For if they come 
to the door of the House, they will cross the threshold of the 
House, and any gentleman who does not know that, or who is so 
weak or so wild as to suppose that any declaratory resolution 
adopted by both Houses as a condition precedent can stop that 
flood, had better put his puny hands across the flowing flood 
of the Mississippi and say that it shall not enter the Grulf of 
Mexico. 

There are things, gentlemen, that are possible at one time, and 
not possible at another. You can now prevent the rise of the 
flood, but when it is up you can not stop it. If gentlemen are in 
favor of meeting that state of things, then do as has been so dis- 
tinctly intimated in the course of this debate : vote against this 
bill in all its aspects, leave the door wide open, and let " our breth- 
ren of the South," whose bayonets are now pointed at our broth- 
ers' hearts, drop their arms, put on the seemly garb of peace, go 
through the forms of an election, and assert the triumph of their 
beaten faction under the forms of political authority, after the 
sword has decided against them. I am no prophet, but that is 
the history of next December if this bill be defeated, and I ex- 
pect it not to become a law. 

But suppose the other course to be pursued. Suppose the 
President sees fit to do what there is not the least reason to sup- 
pose that he desires to do ; suppose that after he has destroyed 
their armies in the field, he should go farther, and do, as I think 
he ought to do, and what the judgment of this country dictates: 
treat those who hold power in the South as rebels, and not as 
governors and legislators, disperse them from the halls of legisla- 
tion, expel them from executive mansions, strip them of the em- 



RECONSTRUCTION OF THE REBEL STATES. 533 

blems of authority, and set to work to find out the pliant and sup- 
ple "Union men," so called, who have cringed before the storm, 
but who will be willing to govern their fellow-citizens under the 
protection of the United States bayonets ; suppose that the fruit- 
ful example of Louisiana shall spread like a mist over all the rest 
of the Southern country, and that representatives like what Lou- 
isiana has sent here, with such a backing of votes as she has 
given, shall appear here at the doors of this hall, whose repre- 
sentatives are they ? I do not mean to speak of those gentlemen 
now here from Louisiana in their individual character, but in their 
political relations to their constituency. Whose representatives 
are they ? 

In Louisiana they are the representatives of the bayonets of 
General Banks and the will of the President, as expressed in his 
secret letter to General Banks. If you admit such representa- 
tives, you must admit, on the same basis and under the same in- 
fluences, representatives from every State from Virginia to Texas. 
The Common Council of Alexandria — which has just sent two 
senators to the other House, and has ratified the amendment to 
the Constitution abolishing slavery in all the rest of Virginia, 
where none of them dare put his portly person — would be en- 
titled to send ten representatives here, and two senators, to speak 
for the indomitable " Old Dominion." If the rebel representa- 
tives are not here in December next, you will have servile tools 
of the executive, who will embarrass your legislation, humble 
your Congress, degrade the name of republican government for 
two years, and then the natural majority of the South, rising in- 
dignantly against that humiliating insult, will swamp you here 
with rebel representatives and be your masters. These are the 
alternatives ; there is no middle ground. 

To meet that state of the case, the honorable gentleman who so 
ably heads the Judiciary Committee [Mr. Wilson] has proposed 
a declaratory resolution, and that is all — a declaratory resolution, 
with no provisions of law to execute it, with no power to arrest 
the flood at our door, a very bubble born amid the hubbub of 
the waters, and floating with the flood — that senators and repre- 
sentatives shall not be received from any State heretofore declared 
in rebellion, until a joint act or resolution of Congress shall have 
declared that they have organized a new government. 

If they have elected their representatives, there is no power 



584 [RECONSTRUCTION OF THE REBEL STATES. 

to prevent this House from admitting them, if they see fit to 
do it. 

I hope I answer the gentleman intelligibly. But if such an 
election is held any where in any such State, it is an assertion of 
sovereign power without authority of law — it is rebellion itself; 
and this bill directs the President to disperse the electors, and 
prevent the election being held. If this law should be passed, 
and the President should sanction such an election, it would be 
an impeachable offense ; and if he did not sanction it, the ques- 
tion would never be here to trouble us. I trust I have answered 
the gentleman intelligibly. Now a word upon the criticisms upon 
this bill, and I have done. Provisional governors are to be ap- 
pointed. That is a point of objection to the gentleman from 
Massachusetts [Mr. Eliot], who first spoke, why such governors 
are appointed now without law ; and all that we propose is that 
they shall be under the responsibility of law, and subject to the con- 
trol and confirmation of the Senate. Provisional governors ille- 
gally appointed, and judges of provisional courts unknown to the 
law, and whose appointments have never been submitted to the 
Senate, are now usurping authority in Louisiana. The very land- 
marks of the law are swept from the land ; my effort is to restore 
them, and to that the gentleman objects. 

Why, sir, suppose this bill be not passed, suppose this ma- 
chinery be as objectionable as the gentleman supposes, what is 
the alternative? The President remains in power, with no law 
to guide him. I am attempting to lay down a law for his guid- 
ance. The gentlemen prefer arbitrary will to a written law, and 
they can not avoid that statement of the issue. 

Sir, when I came into Congress ten years ago, this was a gov- 
ernment of law. I have lived to see it a government of personal 
will. Congress has dwindled from a power to dictate law, and 
the policy of the government to a commission to audit accounts 
and appropriate moneys, to enable the executive to execute his 
will and not ours. I would stop at the boundaries of law. When 
I look around for them I seem to be in a waste ; they are as clean 
gone as the division-fences of Virginia estates from here to the 
Eapidan. 

But the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Dawes] said yes- 
terday that by this bill we are reviving the hateful black laws of 
the South. 



RECONSTRUCTION OF THE REBEL STATES. 535 

I drew the section that refers to that subject, and I am content 
to take upon my shoulders all the responsibility connected with 
the revival of all the laws that are revived by the bill which I 
had the honor at the last session to report, which both houses of 
Congress approved by their votes, which to-day I am here to 
maintain ; I took some credit to myself for putting in a brief space 
the shortest possible declaration that all men should be equal be- 
fore the law, when I drew the clause declaring that no law which 
recognizes the right to hold men in involuntary servitude shall 
be recognized, and that the laws for the trial and punishment of 
white persons shall apply to the trial and punishment of all per- 
sons whatever. 

I had ignorantly supposed that if the negro had to be tried by 
the same court, under the same law, upon the same evidence, for 
the same crime, for no other crime, upon no other evidence, and 
by no other tribunal, I had come in those words as near annihi- 
lating the black laws of the South as gentlemen could have done 
if they had spent tomes in writing out the provision for that 
purpose. 

But in order to meet the refined criticism of the gentleman 
from Massachusetts [Mr. Dawes] upon this bill, my friend from 
Ohio [Mr. Ashley] put our heads together, and, after great con- 
tortions of the brain, we thought we might possibly make the 
effectiveness of the law visible to gentlemen whose eyes had failed 
to discover the difficulties of the law of the last session, by insert- 
ing before the words "trial" and "punishment" the word "gov- 
ernment." And as "government" means the provisions and ex- 
ecution of the law which defines the rights of persons and prop- 
erty, and other responsibility of men to the law, I take it that the 
gentleman will withdraw that objection now, and vote for the bill, 
because it does effectually, and even to his satisfaction, annul the 
laws to which he has objected. 

But, says the gentleman [Mr. Dawes] who spoke yesterday, and 
the one who spoke several days ago [Mr. Eliot], "There is no 
time fixed within which the provisional governor must call upon 
the people to elect whether they will organize a State govern- 
ment or not." Certainly not, nor can there be any. It is neces- 
sarily left to the judgment of those whom we charge with the 
execution of the law. If the President shall appoint provisional 
governors who will not execute his bidding, nor take his word 



536 RECONSTRUCTION OF THE REBEL STATES. 

for it that the rebellion is suppressed, and that the people have 
sufficiently returned to their allegiance, then there is no remedy 
except to change the President, and that remedy, I fear, is imprac- 
ticable. 

I take the men we find in power, the men who must execute 
all the laws we pass, if they be executed at all, but the real griev- 
ance is not expressed. I prescribe a rule, and it is my imposing 
any rule that is the offense, and not the execution of it, nor any 
doubt about its meaning, still less the uncertainty of its beginning. 
There is no uncertainty. The bill says there shall be no govern- 
ment organized until armed resistance is suppressed, and the peo- 
ple have sufficiently returned to their allegiance, the test of which 
is to be, that a majority of the people have taken the simple oath 
to support the Constitution of the United States. But there are 
those who would leave one tenth of the people govern all the 
world. There are those who would organize into oligarchies, like 
the Common Council of Alexandria, to sack the blood of great 
States, degrade the character, and exasperate the temper of the 
people of proud commonwealths, and send their tools here to leg- 
islate for my constituents. Sir, my successor may vote as he 
pleases. But, when I leave this hall, there shall be no vote from 
the Third Congressional District of Maryland that recognizes any 
thing but the body and mass of the people of any State as en- 
titled to govern them, and to govern the people that I represent. 
And they who may wish to substitute one tenth, or any other 
fractional minority, for that great power of the people to govern, 
may take, and shall take, the odium. Ay, I shall brand it upon 
them that, in the middle of the nineteenth century, in the only 
free republic that the world knows, where alone the principles of 
popular government are the rules of authority, they have gone to 
the Dark Ages for their models, reviving the wretched examples 
of the most odious governments the world has ever seen, and 
propose to stain the national triumph by creating a low, wretch- 
ed, vulgar, corrupt, and cowardly oligarchy to govern the free 
men of the United States — the national arms to guarantee and 
enforce their oppressions ; not by my vote, sir, not by my vote. 
If the majority of the people will not recognize the authority of 
the Constitution of the United States, what does the gentleman . 
say who proposes these declaratory resolutions ? That they shall 
come here without it ? No, sir ; but I would govern them for a 



RECONSTRUCTION OF THE REBEL STATES. 537 

thousand years first by the authority of the Constitution which 
they have defied, and will not acknowledge. And govern them 
how ? Not by the uncontrolled will of this or any other Presi- 
dent that ever lived, George Washington included. I would 
govern them by the laws that in the hours of their sanity they 
enacted, unaltered, excepting so far as the progress of events re- 
quire that they should be altered, to the extent we have proposed 
to alter them in the bill, and no farther. I leave their own rules 
for their government — make the President appoint, under his offi- 
cial and public responsibility, the officers who are to execute them ; 
and if they do not like to be governed in that way, let us trust 
that the prodigal will one day come to his senses, and, humbly 
kneeling before the Constitution that he vainly defied, swear be- 
fore Almighty God that he will again be true to it. 

That is my remedy for the grievance, that is what we propose. 
It is for this IIouse to say whether it prefers arbitrary discretion 
or legal rule ; whether it prefers that anarchy shall reign, or that 
law shall be supreme ; whether it prefers that we shall be overrun 
by men who do not recognize the government, and who yet insist 
on taking part in our legislation, or whether it will erect a barrier 
now at this time to prevent the question being forced on our suc- 
cessors, who, wiser, it may be firmer, better republicans than we, 
will, from the mere fact of the pressure of the times and the clam- 
or of the day, be absolutely incompetent to deal with those things 
which we now, before the event, can calmly and deliberately adju- 
dicate. Sir, I have done. 

A motion was then made to lay the bill and amendments on the ta- 
ble, which was carried by 91 to G4 — 27 not voting. A motion to re- 
consider this vote was laid on the table by 92 to 57. So the bill was 
finally disposed of. 



SPEECH ON PROPOSING AN AMENDMENT 
TO THE MISCELLANEOUS BILL PROHIBIT- 
ING THE TRIAL OF CITIZENS BY MILL 
TARY COMMISSIONS. 

The trials of citizens by military commissions, especially within the 
States not in rebellion, where the courts of the United States were open, 
had from the beginning been opposed by Mr. Davis. He had, as early 
as December, 1861, in his speech at Brooklyn, protested against such 
misuse of power as tending to increase the strength of the enemies of the 
government, and to bring the administration into disrepute through an 
implied avowal on its part that the laws of the land did not provide an 
adequate remedy and punishment for those offenders, in favor of whom 
their mere trial by a military commission raised a sympathy, and the de- 
sire to relieve which inseparable from a view of.oppression. 

At the close of the Thirty-eighth Congress (March 2, 1865), when the 
Miscellaneous Appropriation Bill was on its final passage, Mr. Davis 
moved an amendment thereto (given below) prohibiting such trials, and 
spoke in support of his proposition as set forth in the following speech, 
being the last delivered by him in Congress : 

Sec. — . And be it farther enacted, That no person shall bo tried by court-martial, 
or military commission, in any State or Territory where the courts of the United 
States are open, except persons actually mustered, or commissioned, or appointed 
in the military or naval service of the United States, or rebel enemies charged with 
being spies ; and all proceedings hei - etofore had contrary to this provision are de- 
clared vacated ; and all persons not subject to trial, under this act, by court-martial 
or military commission, now held under sentence thereof, shall be forthwith dis- 
charged or delivered to the civil authorities, to be proceeded against before the 
courts of the United States according to law. And all acts inconsistent herewith 
are hereby repealed. 

I wish to say merely a few words in explanation of this amend- 
ment. 

Mr. Chairman, I do not desire, at this period of the session, to 
detain the House even by an argument in favor of the amend- 
ment I have submitted. I desire to state merely what it contem- 
plates, and to beg the House to give a direct vote upon it. It is 



AMENDMENT TO MISCELLANEOUS APPROPRIATION BILL. 539 

a measure which touches the very foundation of republican gov- 
ernment, the liberty of the citizen, nothing more, nothing less. 

I do not think it is exclusively, perhaps not chiefly, the fault, 
of those in authority that military commissions have tried, con- 
trary to the Constitution and laws of the United States, many of 
its citizens. It began first in the rebel States, then spread to the 
border States, the theatre of armed conflicts, then invaded Penn- 
sylvania, Indiana, and New York, amid the general acclaim of the 
people ; and now that it reaches as far north as Boston, we hear 
the first murmur of its advocates or instigators. What that amend- 
ment contemplates is, not to cast imputation upon any administra- 
tion or any officer, but, recognizing the error which the people, as 
well as the government, have in common committed against the 
foundation of their own safety, now, before the very idea of the 
supremacy of the law has faded from the country, to restore it to 
its power. 

This amendment is confined rigidly to the loyal States, to the 
States in which the courts of the United States are open, to the 
States whose governments the United States guarantee, so that it 
does not strip the government of any power, legal or usurped, 
which it has thought necessary in its efforts to suppress the re- 
bellion. It leaves every body to be tried by court-martial who is 
actually in the milita^ service of the government, or who, being 
a rebel enemy,' is arrested as a spy. But it annuls every thing 
that has been done heretofore under illegal military commissions, 
directs all persons now in illegal confinement under sentence of 
illegal military commissions to be either discharged, or delivered 
to the civil tribunals, to be there proceeded against according to 
law. There the amendment stops. 

I desire to make an imputation on no one. This amendment 
is proposed for the benefit of every party and of every adminis- 
tration ; and I trust that the House will allow it to be incorporated 
into this bill, that it may become the acknowledged, as it is now 
the supreme, law of this land and the right of the citizen. 

Tellers were ordered ; and Messrs. "Washburne, of Illinois, and Davis, 
of Maryland, were appointed. 

The committee divided ; and the tellers reported — ayes, 50 ; nays, Go. 

So the decision of the Chair was not sustained. 

The question was upon the amendment of Mr. Davis, of Maryland, 
who spoke as follows : 



540 AMENDMENT TO MISCELLANEOUS APPROPRIATION BILL. 

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the weight of the criticism of the 
distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Stevens], and I 
am sure that nobody will say that I have ever embarrassed the 
proceedings of this House by any pertinacious adherence to 
schemes of my own. I have never embarrassed the House week 
after week by motions to tax or exempt whisky on hand. That 
. would have been a more appropriate subject of criticism than 
such an amendment as this, which is never too early, and can 
never be too late, until the voice of liberty shall cease to be heard 
in the United States. Then it will be impertinent to arrest the 
progress of supplies for the government by calling the attention 
of the representatives of the people to the freedom of their con- 
stituents. Let this bill perish a thousand times rather than that 
any vote should go on the records of this House declaring that 
the protection of the liberties of the citizens of Massachusetts and 
citizens of Maryland are not of paramount importance to a vote 
of money for the violators of their rights. There has been no 
other period, sir, at which I could obtain the ear of the House on 
such an amendment. I have had my eye on the gradual intru- 
sion of the military authority on the rights of the citizen from the 
outbreak of the rebellion. It was first instigated by the people ; 
and the most eminent jurists of the land converted their clamor 
into the semblance of the voice of the law by maintaining the 
right of the President to suspend the habeas corpus without the 
authority of Congress — in the face of John Marshall's judgment. 
Gentlemen of the opposition, on this topic, have no right here to 
cast imputations on the administration. George B. M'Clellan first 
set the bad example in an order illegally suspending the writ of 
habeas corpus in Maryland. I refer to that not as an imputation 
on them, but because it shows that it is no party question with 
which we are dealing to-day, but an American question, a ques- 
tion of republican liberty endangered by the common madness of 
government and people. The evil has gone so far that to-day 
every man feels, without the necessity of an argument, that there 
must be a stop put to military trials of citizens in the States here 
represented, or there is no law or liberty in the land. 

The honorable gentleman from Pennsylvania has said that 
these convictions have taken place under laws passed by Con- 
gress. I admit it in some cases ; but that proves only that Con- 
gress is also guilty of the usurpation. And the honorable gen- 



AMENDMENT TO 'MISCELLANEOUS APPROPRIATION BILL. 541 

tleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Dawes] has told us that the law 
which he introduced has failed to serve the purpose contemplated, 
while it has developed consequences of which he did not dream. 
The honorable gentleman says that it ought to be repealed ; and 
if it ought to be repealed, then carry the remedy to the root of 
the grievance, and discharge the men who were convicted under 
what was in form a law, but in fact a usurpation which had not 
the authority of the Constitution. 

But, sir, have prosecutions stopped within the limits of the acts 
of Congress ? If they had, I could have heard with more patience 
the appeal of my honorable friend from Pennsylvania. But every 
one knows that they have not. We in Maryland have known it 
by sharp castigation now for three years. It is now being known 
in New York. And in Boston men have turned gray under per- 
secutions not according to those laws. 

But, sir, what do you say of trials for things that are not crimes 
under any law, for things that are not defined to be crimes, civil 
or military ? What do you say to the trial of a loyal citizen in 
the city of Baltimore upon the charges and specifications which I 
hold in my hands, for forging Jefferson Davis's currency ? One 
of my constituents is now in jail under those specifications, having 
been tried and condemned by a military tribunal for attempting 
to break down the rebel currency ! I can state no other fact that 
will better illustrate the insolence of irresponsible military tribu- 
nals, known to no law, appointed under no law, restrained by no 
law, authorized by nobody, bound by no law but the will of the 
men who sit in their uniforms to try the rights of American citi- 
zens according to the law of the sword. 

Mr. Stevens. Do I understand the gentleman to say that this 
man was convicted on the ground of having counterfeited rebel 
currency ? 

Mr. Davis, of Maryland. He was condemned for that, and is 
now in jail. 

Mr. Stevens. Well, I think that a man who was fool enough 
to spend his time in such work ought to suffer some severe pun- 
ishment. 

Mr. Davis, of Maryland. If all fools are at the mercy of the 
military courts, and they are to judge of it, they have a wide ju- 
risdiction. (Laughter.) 

Then there is the case of Weisenfield. This man was not 



542 AMENDMENT TO MISCELLANEOUS APPROPRIATION BILL. 

charged with defrauding the government under the act of Con- 
gress; he never placed himself within the reach of the law to 
which the gentleman from Massachusetts has referred. He was 
charged, and in my judgment charged falsely, and convicted on 
testimony which no jury in the world, of any political complex- 
ion, would weigh an instant, of having sold a few hundred dollars' 
, worth of goods to a government spy to be sent across the lines to 
the Southern Confederacy. That trial by military commission 
was authorized by no law known to any statute-book in the 
United States. The crime of trading with the rebel States is 
punishable by law only as giving aid and comfort to the enemy, 
and that is expressly directed to be tried and punished by indict- 
ment before the United States courts for a misdemeanor merely ; 
but he now lies in a New York penitentiary, herding with felons, 
murderers, and thieves, though, if legally convicted before Chief 
Justice Chase, he could by law have been sentenced only to fine 
and imprisonment in jail ! 

I am daily beset by letters and solicitations of loyal gentlemen, 
my firmest and best personal friends in the world, to go to the 
President and beg as a boon that this man be pardoned! I have 
had no stronger pressure brought upon me since I have been in 
public life. My reply is, If a petition is gotten up for Mr. Weis- 
enfield to pardon the President for his illegal oppression, I will 
sign it ; but I will not degrade the name of an American citizen 
by signing a petition to beg as a favor the personal liberty of an 
American citizen, illegally and oppressively condemned by a mil- 
itary commission, and that at the hands of the President, who 
twice refused to refer his case to the courts of the United States, 
wide open for his protection, and in the face of the laws and Con- 
stitution of the United States subjected him to this illegal perse- 
cution. 

Sir, let him stay where he is till the voice of public indignation 
or the whispers of conscience compel his honorable discharge — 
not his pardon. Till they who illegally confined him shall beg 
him to come forth. 

Mr. Chairman, the alarming fact is this — military commissions 
do not even profess to be governed by the laws of the United 
States enacted by Congress. They have created a department of 
jurisprudence' unknown to the laws of the United States, no- 
where embodied in statutes or decisions, called the "customs of 



AMENDMENT TO MISCELLANEOUS APPROPRIATION BILL. 543 

war." They try loyal men in loyal States, where no war rages, 
for a violation of what they call " the usages of wary Here are the 
pandects of the future empire of the United States — the rulings of the 
Judge Advocate General on " the usages and customs of war," 
applied to peaceful citizens in loyal States where the courts are 
open, where the law alone ought to be the rule of every judgment 
and every conviction. 

This invention of the law of " the usages of war" and " military 
offenses," applied to citizens and friends instead of enemies, annuls 
every act of Congress. 

In vain does the act of the 3d of March, 1863, punish the aid- 
ing a soldier to desert by one not in the military service on legal 
conviction in the courts of the United States ; in vain does the 
act of the 3d of March, 1863, punish fraudulent claims, false oaths, 
forged signatures, forging papers, embezzling United States prop- 
erty, false receipts for arms, purchasing arms from soldiers, when 
committed by a person in the military forces of the United States, 
on conviction by court-martial, and at the discretion of the court- 
martial, but in the third section declares that any person not in the 
military forces of the United States guilty of those acts shall for- 
feit certain fines and be subject to certain imprisonment on con- 
viction in the courts of the United States ; for the military com- 
missions presume to punish every one of these acts committed by 
citizens in defiance of the law securing them a constitutional trial. 

By the act of the 2d of March, 1831, forging pay certificates is 
punishable by the courts of the United States in the District of 
Columbia ; yet a military commission punishes it within sight of 
the open court-house and of the President's mansion ! 

In vain the act of March 3, 1863, expressly directs a person 
guilty of resisting the draft to be arrested by the provost-marshal 
and to be forthwith delivered to the civil authorities, and, on con- 
viction by them, subjects him to fine and imprisonment; the mil- 
itary commissions have annulled that law, and, instead of deliver- 
ing the person to the civil authorities for trial, themselves hold 
and try, convict and punish him ; and this where the courts of the 
United States are wide open, in this district where Congress sits 
in peace and enacts the laws which are thus defied ! 

If these things be not arrested, there is no law but the sword, 
no judge but the majority of a military commission holding their 
commission at the will of the President. 



544 AMENDMENT TO MISCELLANEOUS APPROPEIATION BILL. 

Now, sir, I have a word for the gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. 
Yeaman], who moved to include persons engaged in violating the 
rules and customs of war. Does that mean citizens of the United 
States in loyal States, where the courts of the United States are 
open, where their act is treason, for which the statutes of the 
United States say they shall be tried, on indictment, before the 
courts of the United States, and who, the Constitution says, shall 
be tried no otherwise than by a jury of the State and district in 
which the crime was committed, and convicted only on the testi- 
mony of two witnesses ? 

If it is notorious that they are guerrillas, why, in the name of 
conscience and common sense, can not that be made to appear to 
a jury of their loyal fellow-citizens, to be summoned by a marshal 
appointed by the President himself; prosecuted by a district at- 
torney that he appoints; adjudged by judges who hold their office 
during life ; many of them now even appointed by Mr. Lincoln, 
and all liable to impeachment by us and conviction by the Senate 
if not fit to administer justice? If it be a matter of doubt, then 
the prisoners are entitled to that doubt ; and if it is so plain that 
there is no doubt, then any tribunal will convict. That is my 
answer to that proposed amendment. 

In the first place, if three fourths of the State of Kentucky are 
subject to incursions of guerrillas, the other fourth is not, and that 
will furnish jurors enough. If there is room to hold a military 
court there is room to hold a civil court. If men are not afraid 
to go to testify before a military court they will not be afraid to 
go before a civil court. If bayonets are needed to protect them 
before a military court, bayonets can protect them before a civil 
court. Sir, this hankering after military courts is not because they 
can not be tried and convicted before the courts of the United 
States if guilty ; but men mad with civil war want a sharper and 
easier way to deal with criminals as enemies. It is the cry for 
vengeance and not justice! That is what it is, and nothing else. 

I live in a State that has never disgraced itself by rebellion, 
but it has been disturbed by internal dissensions ; and I know 
the rancorous hostility which has grown up between men even of 
the same family. I do not wish military tribunals to apply their 
harsh, sharp vengeance between men who live on adjacent estates, 
at the instigation of personal revenge, of malice, without local 
public trial, unprotected by the rights secured to them by the 



AMENDMENT TO MISCELLANEOUS APPEOPRIATION BILL. 545 

Constitution and laws of the United States, when a whispered lie 
may stain innocence with the penitentiary by the vote of two out 
of three of a military commission. If they have committed acts 
which render them dangerous, but are not criminal or can not be 
proved, we have authorized the suspension of the habeas corpus, 
and the President can hold them ; not try, not convict, not dis- 
grace, not degrade, not kill, but hold them under the precaution- 
ary discretion conferred by law, and rendered secure by the mili- 
tary power. If they have committed crimes known to the law 
which can be proved, and which it is desirable to punish, the 
President can prove it before the courts of the United States in 
Maryland, and they can be convicted in the courts of the United 
States in Maryland. 

Now a word touching the amendment of my honorable friend 
from Ohio [Mr. Schenck], with whom I always differ with the 
greatest hesitation. Yet I think that his logic will bring him to 
this conclusion, that if the Constitution of the United States says 
that no one shall be tried for an infamous crime otherwise than 
by a jury of the State and district, except cases arising in the mili- 
tary or naval forces of the United States, any enactment which au- 
thorizes any one to be tried in any other way in the States where 
United States courts are open is itself void. The tribunal which 
tries a case not arising in the military forces in any other way is a 
trespasser, and the party who was convicted has a private remedy 
for the injury he has sustained if the court had no jurisdiction. 
No one can violate the right of the citizen to immunity from mili- 
tary trial safely, whether we declare it or not, and every one has 
his remedy to-day in the courts of the United States, in spite of 
any enactment, for every oppression. 

Why, then, place -a provision in the law declaring these pro- 
ceedings to be void ? In order that a loud voice should go out 
from this hall to the American people, ringing over the land, to 
announce by authority that their representatives recognize and 
declare the nullity of the proceedings of these military tribunals, 
and to encourage the people to seek redress in the courts of the 
country, not by crawling solicitations at the hands of the Presi- 
dent of the United States, but of right, by law, before the courts, 
which are the glory and the safety of the American republic. 

My honorable friend also wishes me to strike out that part of 
my amendment which provides that those not liable to trial by 

M M 



546 Amendment to miscellaneous appropriation bill. 

military courts now held under their sentences should be dis- 
charged, or delivered to the civil tribunals for trial. Sir, if it -will 
satisfy any gentleman here, or remove any doubt or hesitation, I 
will most cheerfully agree that the word " discharge" shall be 
stricken out ; so that the provision will stand that these men shall 
be delivered over to the civil tribunals to be proceeded against 
' according to law — the American's birthright. 

But it is objected by my honorable friend from Ohio [Mr. 
Schenck] that these men, having first disputed the jurisdiction of 
the military court, will, when brought before a civil court, plead 
their former conviction in bar. I know the eminent legal ability 
of my friend, and if he will run over in his mind the form of plea 
that must be made in such a case, he would find that it would be 
this : On a given day, at a given place, before A, B, C, a military 
commission convened by order of the President of the United 
States, I, a citizen not in the military service of the United States, 
was convicted for a violation of "the usages of war," or some 
crime known to the law, but punishable by statute only in the 
courts of the United States, and sentenced to punishment. My 
learned friend would be the first to put in a demurrer to such a 
plea. On the record it would appear that the military commis- 
sion had no jurisdiction of the party ; that he had not been con- 
victed at all ; that he had never been in jeopardy of life or limb ; 
for the Constitution forbids such a tribunal to try such a person. 
The jurisdiction of every court, especially one of limited and ex- 
ceptional jurisdiction, may be impeached collaterally, or must ap- 
pear on its record ; and the appearance of generals, and colonels, 
and captains, sitting at the will of the President, in place of ven- 
erable judges, whose tenure is good behavior, and the absence of 
a jiny, show that it is not a court at all, but an unlawful combina- 
tion of trespassers usurping the functions of a court, guilty of a 
crime, and not exercising an authority. Any court of the United 
States will, on habeas corpus, discharge a citizen confined under 
sentence of such a tribunal. 

Let those now in illegal confinement seek that remedy ; and if 
it be denied them, let an impeachment by the representatives of 
the people vindicate the rights of the people. 

Mr. Chairman, the public safety never has required these illegal 
and summary trials ; it now requires that they cease. The past 
men are ready to forget, the American people most of all ; they 



AMENDMENT TO MISCELLANEOUS AlTItOl'MATlON BILL. 547 

instigated or tolerated the usurpations of those in authority ; but, 
they now have felt the sharpness of military justice j and demand 
of their rulers a return to the Constitution and laws. If hereto- 
fore they have violated the law and Constitution — I do not say 
criminally, I do not say with intent to oppress, I do not say even 
knowing it to be criminal — it was the common error ; and they 
may plead the error of the people which misled the leaders of 
the people at the beginning of the rebellion. More firmness, more 
knowledge, more coolness in high places, might perhaps have ar- 
rested the popular current, and silenced the popular tumult, and 
kept the torrent within the bounds of law. It was not found in 
places of authority ; all bowed before the storm; all floated with 
the current. It is in the power of the representatives of the 
American people alone to stop it before every vestige of Ameri- 
can liberty is buried beneath the waters. 

Sir, I am not willing to change one word of my- amendment. 
It was not framed out of my own head, of my old-fashioned 
whims and fancies, now out of fashion in this era of gold lace 
and military vertigo. I had frequent consultations with some of 
the ablest members upon this side of the House, those most con- 
spicuous for the ardor of their support of the administration, and 
they think with mc that obstinate adherence to these abuses must 
destroy either the administration or the republic. If it would 
satisfy any one to strike out the word " discharge," I have no ob- 
jection, because an American citizen is safe when delivered into 
the custody of the civil authorities, to be proceeded against ac- 
cording to law ; but beyond that I do not feel disposed to modify 
my amendment in any particular. 

Least of all can I accept the amendment of the gentleman from 
Iowa [Mr. Kasson], which enumerates the offenses for which citi- 
zens shall not be tried by military courts, and yields the whole- 
principle by admitting that persons not in the military forces, in 
the States where the United States courts are open, may be tried 
for violating the "usages and customs of war;" it recognizes the 
category of military offenses committed by a citizen, an exception 
which would place your liberty and life, and mine, at the beck 
and call, at the will and pleasure of any military commission of 
officers too worthless for field service, ordered to try us, and "or- 
ganized to convict." That amendment involves a total misappre- 
hension of the whole question. It is not what offenses military 



548 AMENDMENT TO MISCELLANEOUS APPROPRIATION BILL. 

courts may try, but what persons they may try for any offense. 
The Constitution forbids them to try any citizen for any offense. 

I will not detain the House by narrating the individual cases 
of oppression that are fresh in my memory. There is no gentle- 
man who does not know of such cases in his own neighborhood, 
and who has not felt this atmosphere of oppression around him. 
If there be, they are happier than we are in Maryland, or than 
they are in Massachusetts. 

This measure is demanded by the feeling of the country, and 
in my judgment, if the House will now say that the liberty of the 
American citizen is of equal moment with the Miscellaneous Ap- 
propriation Bill, and will pronounce by such a vote as that by 
which it referred the resolution of the gentleman from New York 
[Mr. Ganson], with only three dissenting voices, to the Military 
Committee, that law is still supreme, every man in the United 
States will breathe freer, and bear himself more loftily, and look 
with assured joy to the day when armed rebellion shall be de- 
stroyed,^ be followed, not by armed despotism, but by the peace- 
ful reign of liberty and law; by submission, but not by servitude. 
(Applause on the floor and in the galleries.) 

Mr. Faensworth. Mr. Chairman, I rise for the purpose of op- 
posing these amendments. In desperate emergencies vigorous 
measures are required. I am here for the purpose of sustaining 
with my voice and vote those measures adopted and put in force 
by the "War Department in the punishment of culprits in any 
manner connected with the army. The gentleman from Mary- 
land [Mr. Davis] has dilated largely on those things that have oc- 
curred in his own State. He has referred to the act of General 
M'Clellan. It is not necessary that I should say here that that 
act of his rendered his name more popular, brought him into more 
favor, and attracted to him more of the affection of the people of 
the country than any other act of his life. Is it not well known 
that when he ordered the arrest of the Maryland Legislature, that 
Legislature was convened for the very purpose of hurrying the 
State into secession and involving it in civil war? The gentle- 
man refers to the arrests made in the city of Baltimore, and in 
Maryland. Has not the gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. Yeaman] 
told us that in many counties in his own district the civil law 
could not be enforced; that they have neither judges nor jurors 
who will enforce it, nor court-houses in which to hold their courts ; 



AMENDMENT TO MISCELLANEOUS APPKOPPJATION BILL. 549 

that they have been burned by secessionists ? So it was in the 
city of Baltimore up to within two years since. I believe that 
two years ago a rebel could not be convicted in any court in that 
city. Those vigorous measures of the President and of the War 
Department are what saved Maryland from civil war and the 
country from destruction. 

Mr. Davis, of Maryland. The gentleman will allow me to say 
that there would be more fear that a disloyal man could not have 
a fair trial in Maryland before a civil court, so intense is the de- 
sire to punish any thing looking like treason. 

Mr. Farnsworth. That may be now, and is a very healthy 
feeling, but two years ago it was not so. 

Mr. Davis, of Maryland. There was never a moment, sir, in 
which it was not so. 

Mr. Farnsworth. There was a moment, sir, when any thing 
looking to the suppression of the rebellion was very unpopular in 
Baltimore. There was a time when both the civil and military 
arms of the government were powerless to preserve peaae and or- 
der in the gentleman's own city. There was a time when Massa- 
chusetts soldiers, marching peacefully through that city to the res- 
cue and defense of the capital, were ruthlessly set upon by the 
mob of secessionists, and murdered in the streets of Baltimore, and 
there was no power there to suppress the riot. There was a time 
when the authorities of Maryland, through their governor, made 
application to the President of the United States that no more 
troops should pass over the soil of Maryland, because the civil 
and military power of that State could not preserve order. With- 
out the suspension of the habeas corpus, and without the vigorous 
measures put in force by the government, where would that State 
be to-day? Probably in the Union, but she would have been the 
seat of war, and her fair fields would have been desolated as are 
now the fair fields of Virginia. 

Mr. Davis, of Maryland. Will the gentleman allow me to cor- 
rect him ? 

Mr. Farnsworth. Certainly. 

Mr. Davis, of Maryland. I desire to say that there never was 
a day when the people of Maryland were not masters of her for- 
tunes, and masters of the capital of the United States, and that Mr. 
Lincoln was inaugurated here only because they were loyal. 

Mr. Farnsworth. If that is the case, it seems to me there is a 
monstrous lie going the rounds of the country. 



550 AMENDMENT TO MISCELLANEOUS APPROPRIATION BILL. 

Mr. Davis, of Maryland. I think there is. The people of Ma- 
ryland have been libeled from one end of the country to the other. 

Mr. Farnswortti. It is well known that when the President 
came here to be inaugurated, four years ago, he was obliged to flee 
through the city of Baltimore like a stranger, in disguise, to avoid 
assassination. 

- Mr. Davis, of Maryland. The gentleman says the President had 
to flee through Baltimore. I say it may be that he did so ; but a 
man of heroic mould would have marched through it safely. 

Mr. Farnsworth. I regret exceedingly, Mr. Chairman, that my 
friend from Maryland, who has been, in the main, right, should 
now, in the last days of the session, surround himself by those 
who have been heretofore his enemies, and who now beslobber 
him with their praise. When a man on this side of the House 
puts himself in such a position as that the unworthy member 
from Maryland [Mr. Harris] congratulates him and smiles his 
praise on him for the speech he makes, and when the gentleman 
from Indiana [Mr. Voorhees] marches over here and takes him by 
the hand, and congratulates him for his assault on the administra- 
tion, he ought to raise his hands toward heaven, and say, " My 
God ! what have I done, that my enemies and the enemies of my 
country should praise me ?" 

Why, sir, how long is it since, in the city of Chicago, only the 
day before the last general election, a stupendous conspiracy was 
discovered ? Among the plotters were persons of that city. They 
had conspired with the rebel prisoners in Camp Douglas, and with 
emissaries from the South, to release all the prisoners in Camp 
Douglas, put arms in their hands, and then sack and destroy the 
city of Chicago. Those men are now being tried before a mili- 
tary commission, and such facts have been proved against them ; 
so thoroughly have they been fastened upon them that one or two 
of them have put an end to their own existence in despair, and in 
anticipation of their deserved doom. 

Gentlemen are mistaken, it seems to me, as to the manner of 
conducting these courts-martial. Every particle of evidence taken 
before them is preserved in writing. The defendants have sub- 
poenas issued for their witnesses, whose attendance is compelled, 
and all the testimony, pro and con, is taken by the judge advocate 
and the counsel of the defendants, for they are allowed to have 
counsel, and the testimony is preserved, and with the specification 



AMENDMENT TO MISCELLANEOUS APPROPRIATION BILL. 551 

and findings is filed in the War Department, where it undergoes 
the careful supervision and review of Judge Holt, one of the ablest, 
most honest men in the country. The findings are thoroughly 
reviewed, and approved or disapproved, and the sentence carried 
out or not, according to that decision. These records go into the 
archives of the government, and can at any time be called for by 
this House, and be published to the world. 

Now this amendment of the gentleman from Maryland [Mr. 
Davis] would let loose upon the country some of the very worst 
characters we ever had among us. It is not long since a resolu- 
tion was introduced into this House, and adopted, instructing the 
Military Committee to examine into the military prisons in this 
city. The Military Committee made that investigation ; they ex- 
amined the prisoners and took testimony. And upon my soul — 
and I think every member of the Military Committee will agree 
with me in this — I do think that of all the rapscallions, of all the 
miserable, devilish tribe I ever saw in my life, they are those in 
the military prisons in this city. I have not heard of one of them, 
no matter how arbitrarily he may have been arrested, but he was 
properly arrested, for he was guilty. 

[Here the hammer fell.] 

March 3. The Committee of Conference having failed to agree, and 
the Senate insisting on its amendment, in the House the bill was defeat- 
ed as follows : 

Mr. Davis, of Maryland. I rise for the purpose of making a re- 
port of the Committee of Conference on the disagreeing votes of 
the two houses on the amendments to the Miscellaneous Appro- 
priation Bill. If it be required the report can be read, but per- 
haps I can accomplish the same purpose by stating briefly and 
more intelligibly the substance of it. 

Mr. Speaker, owing to an error on my part in reference to the 
chairmanship of the committee, it so happens that I took the notes 
of the conference instead of my honorable friend from New York 
[Mr. Littlejohn], and by his courtesy I make the statement of the 
result. 

Having passed over the amendment which was the subject of 
controversy in the House until we reached this point, we then 
reverted to it, and found that there was a radical diversity of 
opinion, and perhaps an irreconcilable one, between the repre- 



552 AMENDMENT TO MISCELLANEOUS APPROPRIATION BILL. 

sentatives of the House and those of the Senate. The gentlemen 
on the part of the Senate stated that while a majority of the Sen- 
ate concurred in the principle involved in that amendment, yet 
that the majority of the Senate had refused upon two votes, had 
deliberately determined not to p>ass the amendment as a part of this 
bill. It was then proposed to them that they should take the 
..section in the form in which it had passed the House, carry it 
into the Senate and pass it immediately as a separate bill, and 
send it to the House in order that we might act upon it imme- 
diately, upon which condition we were ready to have agreed to 
recommend the House to allow the bill to pass without this 
amendment. The gentlemen thought they could not accomplish 
that in the present state of feeling and temper of the Senate, and 
declined to make the effort. 

Under these circumstances, it remained for a majority of the 
House committee to determine between the great result of losing 
an important appropriation bill, or, after having raised a question 
of this magnitude touching so nearly the right of every citizen 
to his personal liberty and the very endurance. of republican in- 
stitutions, and to insure its consideration fastened it on an appro- 
priation bill, to allow it to be stricken out as a matter of second- 
ary importance. The committee thought that their duty to their 
constituents, to the House, and to themselves, would not allow 
them to provide for any pecuniary appropriations at the expense 
of so grave a reflection on the fundamental principles of the gov- 
ernment. 

The situation is a grave one. The President has now by law — 
a law insanely passed by the last Congress, to repeal which this 
House early in its first session unanimously passed a bill which 
to this day the Senate has refused even to consider — the absolute 
authority to deprive every officer of the United States of his 
commission at his will, on his own judgment, and at his pleasure, 
or caprice alone. The law does not merely authorize, but it re- 
quests the President to use the power conferred. 

There' are laws upon the statute-book which subject to trial 
by courts -martial, composed of these officers, thus dependent 
upon the will of the President, large classes of our fellow-citi- 
zens. 

The prac'tice of the government has introduced into the juris- 
prudence of the United States principles unknown to the laws of 



AMENDMENT TO MISCELLANEOUS APPROPRIATION BILL. 553 

the United States, loosely described under the general term of 
" the rules and usages of war," and new crimes, defined by no 
law, called " military offenses ;" and without the authority of any 
statute, constitutional or unconstitutional, pointing these laws — 
confined by the usage of the world to enemies in enemies' terri- 
tory — against our own citizens in our own territory, the govern- 
ment has repeatedly deprived many citizens of the United States 
of their liberty, has condemned many to death, who have only 
been redeemed from that extreme penalty by the kindness of the 
President's heart, aided doubtless by the serious scruples he can 
not but feel touching the legality of the judgment that assigned 
them to death. 

There have been many cases in which judgments of confine- 
ment in the penitentiary have been inflicted for acts not punish- 
able either under the usages of war or under any statute of the 
United States by any military tribunal; crimes for which the 
laws of the United States prescribe the punishment have been 
visited with other and severer punishments by military tribu- 
nals ; violations of contract with the government, real or im- 
puted, have been construed by these tribunals into frauds, and 
punished illegally as crimes; excessive bail has been demand- 
ed, and, when furnished, impudently reduced; and the attempt 
of Congress to discriminate between crimes committed by per- 
sons in the military forces and citizens not in those forces has 
been annulled, and the very offenses it specifically required to 
be tried before the courts of the United States have been tried 
before military tribunals dependent upon the will of the Presi- 
dent. 

The President, when petitioned humbly, has refused or neglect- 
ed more than once to stop- the illegal proceedings and submit the 
case to courts of the United States. 

" Courts-martial are organized to convict" is the sinister declara- 
tion of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and the President 
still tolerates his presence ! 

That hand inserted, under the innocent title of a bill to in- 
crease the paymasters of the navy, a section subjecting every 
agent and servant of the Navy Department to trial by court- 
martial, which passed the Senate and the House without discov- 
ery or exposure, and now hangs on a motion to reconsider. 

It was the settled purpose of oppression disclosed by that 



554 AMENDMENT TO MISCELLANEOUS APPROPRIATION BILL. 

act which occasioned this amendment, and forbids its abandon- 
ment. , 

The committee remember that such things are inconsistent 
with the endurance of republican government. The party which 
tolerates or defends them must destroy itself or the republic. 
They felt they had reached a point at which a vote must be cast 
which may break up political parties, or if it do not, will break 
up or save a great republican government. Before these altern- 
atives they could not hesitate. They thought it best now, at 
this time, to leave this law standing as a broken dike in the midst 
of the rising flood of lawless power around us, to show to this 
generation how high that flood of lawless power has risen in only 
three years of civil war, as a warning to those who are to come 
after us, as an awakening to those who are now with us. 

They have, therefore, come to the determination, so far as the 
constitutional privileges and prerogatives of this House will ena- 
ble them to accomplish the result, that this bill shall not become 
a law if these words do not stand as part of it — the affirmation 
by the representatives of the States and of the people of the in- 
alienable birthright of every American citizen ; and on that ques- 
tion they appeal from the judgment of the Senate to the judg- 
ment of the American people. 

Mr. Littlejohn. Believing, sir, as I do, that this great repub- 
lic could not have been given to posterity except by the exercise 
of the very power of which the amendment of my friend from 
Maryland [Mr. Davis] seeks at this time to deprive the exec- 
utive, I agreed with the Senate committee, and it was our desire 
to report unanimously, advising that the House recede from its 
amendment. We could not agree, however, and hence we have 
narrowed down the question as much as possible. I propose 
therefore, if it be in order, that the House concur in the report of 
the Committee of Conference upon all except the amendment 
known as the Winter Davis amendment, and upon that I move 
that the House recede, so as to bring the question to a direct vote. 
And upon these motions I move the previous question. 

Mr. Davis, of Maryland. I am in earnest in this matter, and 
am determined that not one item of this bill shall pass without 
the whole of it. 

Mr. Kasson. I appeal to the gentleman to allow the appropri- 
ation for the insane to be made. 



AMENDMENT TO MISCELLANEOUS APPROPRIATION BILL. 555 

Mr. Littlejohn. I agree with, the gentleman from Maryland. 
I object to any such proposition. This whole bill must pass 
through, or none of it. 

A determination being thus manifested that the bill should not be- 
come a law without the amendment securing citizens against trials by 
courts-martial, the House, after one or two dilatory votes, proceeded to 
other business till adjournment sine die. 



LETTER ON RECONSTRUCTION.— UNIVERSAL 
SUFFRAGE. 

To the rising of the Thirty-eighth Congress rapidly succeeded the 
events which astounded the country — the surrender of the rebel armies 
under Lee, the assassination of the President, the attempts to assassinate 
the Vice-President and the Secretary of State, and the final dispersion 
of the armed rebellion in the Southern States. 

Mr. Davis had left Congress, with health impaired by labors and ex- 
posure there, but he still continued his efforts in relation to the matter 
of reconstruction of the governments in the Southern States. 

In May he wrote to a friend in Washington upon that subject the fol- 
lowing letter, which contains the first formal declaration of his opinion 
as to the necessity of conferring the right of suffrage on the colored race 
in those States. 

Baltimore, May 27, 18G5. 

Mr dear Sir, — Please accept my acknowledgments for your 
kind note. 

I wish I could give you a short and satisfactory answer to your 
brief and pregnant question touching our prospects under Presi- 
dent Johnson. 

The future of the nation is summed up in the restoration of po- 
litical power to the States lately in rebellion. 

Of what the President's policy is on that topic I know nothing. 

The conditions of the problem are plain, and the consequences 
of the several possible solutions follow with logical certainty. It 
rests with the President, in the state in which Congress has left 
the question, to take the initiative, and the mode in which that is 
done will determine all that follows. Whatever State govern- 
ments he allows to be organized, and to elect representatives and 
senators to Congress, will be recognized by Congress in December 
in all probability. 

None exist now in any State which rebelled ; none can be or- 
ganized legally without the assent of the United States, and no 
steps to secure that assent can be taken without his permission. 

The President's only power over the question rests in his right 



LETTER ON RECONSTRUCTION. 557 

to refuse permission for any Convention or election to be held, 
unless on terms satisfactory to him ; but that power is decisive. 
If he refuse to permit any election or any Convention to be held, 
things will await the solution of Congress. 

If he permit the aggregate white population of the South, qual- 
ified to vote under the old governments abrogated by the rebel- 
lion, to organize the State governments, that installs the revolu- 
tionary faction in power in the States, and fills Congress with their 
representatives and senators. 

That is to place the sceptre in the hands from which w r e have 
just wrested the sword. 

If the President attempt to discriminate the loyal from the dis- 
loyal, and exclude from voting all who have given aid and com- 
fort to the rebellion, a mere handful of the population will re- 
main, wholly incompetent to form or maintain a State govern- 
ment, and sure to be overwhelmed by the political counter-revo- 
lution at the next election, which will restore power to the leaders 
of the rebellion. While it stands under the protection of the 
United States it will constitute an odious oligarchy, disposing of 
the lives and property of the great mass of their fellow-citizens, 
without any responsibility, and controlling the national legislation 
by the people for whom they vote. 

This result is unavoidable. The whole mass of the population 
of the South has given aid and comfort to the rebellion. The war 
was made by the accession of the Union men to the rebel faction. 
It is idle to talk of a quiescent mass of loyal men overborne by 
violence. It was the Union men who passed the Ordinance of Se- 
cession in Virginia, and who made it effectual after it was passed. 
In no State was the rebellion dangerous without the active aid of 
those opposed to secession. 

But the United States had no friends in the rebel States against 
those States, and they have none to-day. 

The Union men of the South preferred union and peace to dis- 
union ; they deplored the outbreak of the war, but they never 
hesitated a moment which side to take. If there was to be war, 
they were for their States and against the United States. There 
was no respectable number of Union men willing to aid the Unit- 
ed States in compelling submission to the Constitution, and there 
are none now. All submit to force. Many are willing to acqui- 
esce in the unavoidable. All are willing to govern the United 



558 LETTER ON RECONSTRUCTION. 

States again, since independence is impossible ; but all were also 
willing to aid the rebellion ; and not an assault and battery was 
committed for the United States from the Potomac to the Gulf of 
Mexico. 

The Union men of the South did not merely bow to overbear- 
ing force, but they hastened to seek places in the Legislature, the 
. Congress, the executive mansions, and gave it a countenance and 
support, without which it must have fallen in a year ; and when 
its cause was hopeless, they were quiet and submissive, and did 
not rise to aid the United States. 

It is certainly to this class of the white population that we must 
look for aid in restoring civil government in these States, but it is 
a great delusion to suppose them either bold or strong enough to 
meet and defy the united and energetic faction of revolutionists 
which drove them into rebellion. If they be in power, they will 
again do the will of the resolute and reckless men who stood be- 
hind and around them, and no legal line discriminates them from 
the rebel mass. 

If this discrimination be attempted by the oath to support the 
Constitution of the United States, every body will take it, and no- 
body will be excluded. 

If the leaders of the rebellion, civil and military, be excluded, 
though willing to submit and take the oath, the mass of the rebel 
faction will be admitted, and that will be the controlling and de- 
termining element in selecting representatives and senators, and 
the practical result is the same as if nobody were excluded. 

If either of these forms be accepted by the President and recog- 
nized by Congress, it will instantly change the balance of political 
power in the United States. 

It is probable that the people who saved the nation are not con- 
tent to accept its consequences without a murmur. 

None of the white population of the Southern States is interest- 
ed in paying the public debt or imposing taxes to meet its interest. 
They hold none of it. It was created to subjugate them to the 
laws. It has been consumed in their overthrow. It is to be paid, 
in great part, out of their substance. It has annihilated their pub- 
lic debt. Jt has filled the land with ostracized officers, with wound- 
ed soldiers, with an odious free negro population, lately their 
slaves, and still under their political control. 

If the whites be restored to political power, their representatives 



UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE. 559 

are interested in repudiating that public debt, in refusing to pay- 
its interest, in restoring their officers to the army and navy, in 
placing their wounded on the pension roll, in indemnifying their 
friends for losses by war, or confiscation or forced tax sales, in re- 
storing slavery under the form of apprenticeship or fixed wages 
and compulsory service and discriminating and oppressive legis- 
lation. The effort has already been made in Tennessee, and the 
spirit which dictated it pervades the whole South, and will find 
statutes ready to its hand in every State. In Congress a minority 
can arrest legislation. A majority of either Ilouse can compel 
submission to any terms, under penalty of arresting or disorganiz- 
ing the government. 

The representatives from the States lately in rebellion will form 
a powerful and hostile minority, and if they do not find enough 
enemies of the government from the States now represented to 
give them a majority in one Ilouse for some of the purposes above 
indicated, the near past throws no light on the near future. The 
prospect of political disorganization will present few terrors to 
people still hot with rebellion, smarting with overthrow, and quite 
as content to ruin as to rule the country. 

To expect them to join in electing a Eepublican President 
would be an amiable delusion which the first election would dis- 
pel ; and they might find it some indemnity for emancipation if 
the increased vote they would cast in the name of their freed 
slaves should happen to decide the contest and elevate them to 
power. 

If the people arc ready for these consequences, then there is no 
difficulty in restoring political power to the Southern States. 
Louisiana or Virginia will serve as models, or other forms will 
grow with mushroom rapidity. 

But if it be important that the friends and not the enemies of 
the government shall continue to govern it, other measures must 
be taken. 

The State governments in the South must be placed in hands 
interested to maintain the authority of the United States. , It is 
not enough that conquered people are willing to submit to entitle 
them to govern us. The United States must find friends interest- 
ed and able to suppress hostility to its authority and to discharge 
all the functions of government, state and national, in the face 
of every disloyal or hostile power. And the power of those who 



560 LETTER ON RECONSTRUCTION. 

rebelled must be curbed by those who did not rebel, aided by 
those who joined the rebellion reluctantly, and are anxious to 
atone for their error or weakness. 

This can be done only by recognizing the negro population as 
an integral part of the people of the Southern States, and by re- 
fusing to permit any State government to be organized on any 
other basis than universal suffrage and equality before the law. 

Whatever anomalies may have been winked at during the era 
of slavery, it may well be doubted if, without a serious blow at 
our principles, any government can be recognized as republican 
in form which excludes from suffrage and equal laws a majority 
of the citizens of the States, as would be the case in South Caro- 
lina and Mississippi, or half the citizens, as would be the case in 
Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Virginia, if the negro citizens 
be disfranchised. 

It is certain that governments which declared them equal be- 
fore the law, and recognized universal suffrage, would be repub- 
lican in form and substance also. It is equally certain that such 
a constitution in the Southern States is the only one consistent 
with the national peace and safety ; and Congress has the right, 
and, I think, ought to refuse to recognize any State governments 
in those States not on that basis. 

But the white people of the States which rebelled will not or- 
ganize governments on that basis. No considerable portion of 
the white population of those States is in favor of it. The loyal 
are as much against it as the rebel leaders. 

None will adopt it of themselves, nor will they adopt it on the 
request and under the influence of the President ; but all will 
submit to it if exacted, and accept it if unavoidable. 

To submit the question to the loyal voters of the State assumes 
the existence of a State government and a Constitution defining 
the right of suffrage, and making loyalty a condition. 

But there are no such Constitutions in any State which rebelled. 
The United States have refused to recognize any State govern- 
ment^ in any of those States. There are, therefore, no State gov- 
ernments and no voters in any of the rebel States. 

There are States, and people of those States, both known to the 
Constitution of the United States. And the negroes are as in- 
tegral a part of the people of the State as the whites. Both are 
citizens: neither has a rio;ht to exclude the other: neither can 



UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE. 561 

speak in the name of the State for the other ; it is the equal right 
of both to be heard and represented in constituting their common 
government, and any proposal to submit the question of the polit- 
ical or civil rights of the negroes to the arbitrament of the whites 
is as unjust and as absurd as to submit the question of the polit- 
ical rights of the whites to the arbitrament of the negroes — with 
this difference, that the negroes are loyal every where, and the 
great body of the whites disloyal every where. 

The problem, therefore, is solved by a simple appeal to the peo- 
ple of the State. 

No election can be held, no Convention assemble, no political 
authority be legally exercised in any of those States but by the 
will of the United States, and for the present, till Congress speak, 
by the will of the President. 

If, therefore, the President will declare that no election shall be 
held unless the negro population have a free and equal voice, that 
no Convention shall assemble which they have not helped to elect, 
that none shall proceed to frame a government unless in the be- 
ginning universal suffrage and equality before the law be declared 
its fundamental basis, the problem is solved. 

If those conditions be accepted, the Constitution will be pre- 
sented to Congress and the government recognized which it forms. 

If they be not accepted, the President will hold the States till 
Congress declare how they shall be governed. 

If the problem be not dealt with in this way, or in some such 
way, it will be solved in an adverse sense. 

If it be not solved rightly, it threatens to generate a barren and 
bitter agitation, sure to result disastrously to those who propose 
the political enfranchisement of the negroes, and to consolidate 
the union of the enemies of the government in the loyal States 
into an irresistible power, which must wrest the government from 
the hands of those who had saved it. This coalition is probable 
in any event; but on this question it is certain and fatal. 

The negro population must be recognized by the President and 
Congress as an integral part of the peojrfe of the State in the view 
of the Constitution of the United States, without whose concur- 
rence and full participation of power no State government will 
be recognized in any State which rebelled, or it will remain ostra- 
cized and outcast for another generation, and the enemies of the 
government will wrest it from the hands of those who saved if. 

Nn 



562 LETTER ON RECONSTRUCTION. 

To permit the whites 'to disfranchise the negroes is to permit 
those who have been our enemies to ostracize our friends. The 
negroes are the only persons in those States who have not been 
in arms against us. They have always and every where been 
friendly and not hostile to us. They alone have a deep interest 
in the continued supremacy of the United States, for their free- 
-dom depends on it. On them alone can we depend to suppress a 
new insurrection. They alone will be inclined to vote for the 
friends of the government in all the Southern States. They alone 
have sheltered, fed, and pioneered our starved and hunted breth- 
ren through the swamps and woods of the South, in their flight 
from those who now aspire to rule .them. 

The shame and folly of deserting the negroes are equaled by 
the wisdom of recognizing and protecting their power. 

They will form a clear and controlling majority against the 
united white vote in South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana. . 

With a very small accession from the loyal whites, they will 
form a majority in Alabama, Georgia, and Virginia. 

Unaided in all those States, they will be a majority in many 
congressional and legislative districts, and that alone suffices to 
break the terrible and menacing unity of the Southern vote in 
Congress. 

If organized and led by men having their confidence, the ne- 
groes will prove as powerful and loyal at the polls as they have 
already, in the face of equal clamor and equal prejudice, proved 
themselves under such leaders on the field of battle. 

To those who say they are unfit for the franchise, I reply they 
are more fit than secessionists. 

If they be ignorant, they are not more so than large masses of 
the white voters of the South, or the rabble which is tumbled on 
the wharves of New York and run straight to the polls. 

However ignorant, they know enough to be on the side of the 
government, and the intelligence of the master has not yet taught 
him that wisdom. 

They may be influenced by the master, but the master must 
touch his hat to them at least, and it will be an open question 
whether they will vote with the master any more than they 
fought on his side. It is certain the Northern immigrant will 
find the negro a safe ally, and arguments on his lips will lose no 
weight by their Yankee origin. 



UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE. 553 

It is said not to be safe for masters to visit their plantations in 
Georgia; when they do they will hardly carry much influence 
politically. 

I repeat that in this problem are involved the issues of life and 
death. 

If the negro population be recognized as an integral portion of 
the people of the States which rebelled, and governments can be 
organized on the basis of universal suffrage and equality before 
the law, Congress ought to recognize them, and the problem is 
solved forever. 

If governments be allowed by the President to be organized on 
the basis of the exclusion of the mass of the negro population, 
then Congress ought to refuse to recognize them ; but I fear it 
will not refuse. 

If the question be submitted to the vote of any portion of the 
white population, the negroes will be excluded from power. 

That result entails on us a barren agitation instead of a benef- 
icent settlement. It carries with it a division of the friends of the 
government, and threatens to elevate its enemies to power. 

For premature agitators I have small sympathy. They are 
cocks which crow at midnight; they do not herald the dawn, but 
merely disturb natural rest by untimely clamor. 

But this is a question of political dynamics, which presses now 
for solution, and on it depends the chief fruits of the war. 

If it be not rightly solved now, it will find no solution for a 
generation, and possibly none then without renewed civil commo- 
tions. Over the result I have no power. I can only hope and 
fear. Your obedient servant, 

H. Winter Davis. 



LESSONS OF THE WAR — THE AMERICAN 
CONTINENT REPUBLICAN.— SECURITY FOR 
THE FUTURE, AND SELF-GOVERNMENT BY 
LAW, WITH LIBERTY GUARDED BY POWER. 

Me. Davis was invited to deliver the oration at the civic celebration 
of the 4th of July, 1865, by the city of Chicago. He complied with this 
invitation, and on that occasion the proceedings took place, and the ora- 
tion was delivered, as set forth in the following account : 

Never in the history of our country was the National Anniversary more generally 
and heartily observed than at its recent occurrence. The war had just closed. The 
troops were coming home. The people and the returned veterans had well earned, 
by the patriotic sacrifices of four years, and by its splendid result in a rescued na- 
tion, the right to make the ovation of patriotic rejoicing memorable. In all parts 
of the countiy, in all the cities, in the larger towns, and in the rally by counties, 
festive celebrations took place on a large scale. The best talent of the country was 
enlisted for the intellectual portion of these occasions, and the utterances of not a 
few of these orators will possess a more than transient importance. The subsidence 
of the war has left important and vital questions of national polity and humanity to 
be decided in our day. Utterances which throw light on the path of the people, 
and are an aid to public duty, are worthy to gain a wider circulation than in the 
single locality of their origin. It is with this view that it has been decided to pre- 
serve in the present form the oration of Hon. Henry Winter Davis, of Maryland, the 
orator of the day in Chicago. It is not necessary to claim for it the characteristics 
all loyal men will accord it on perusal. An extended reference to the other accom- 
panying features of the day is scarcely called for. It was a general observance by 
our citizens, probably the first that ever united all classes of our community, all na- 
tionalities, and all organizations, in a common patriotic purpose of Fourth of July 
observance. The procession was in this respect representative. The officers of the 
day were Col. John L. Hancock, Chief Marshal, with' Col. J. M. Loomis, Col. James 
H. Bowen, Chief Engineer Harris, John Durkin, and Jacob Koch, as marshals of the 
several divisions. In the proceedings of the day our returned war heroes bore prom- 
inent share. The audience-room was the largest that offered shelter to any gather- 
ing in the United States on that day. It was the mammoth Hall of the Sanitary 
Fair, then just closed. Probably not less than ten thousand were comfortably ac- 
commodated within reach of the speaker's voice. The following were the officers 
at the Hall : 

President of the Day — Hon. J. B. Rice, Mayor of Chicago. 



LESSONS OF THE WAR, ETC. 555 

Vice-Presidents — Hon. Lyman Trumbull, Hon. Julian S. Rumsey, Hon. J. R. 
Jones, Daniel Brainard, Hon. J. B. Bradwell, Philo Carpenter, A. J. Galloway, 
James Miller, C. B. Blair, Michael M'Auley, Hon. Thomas Drummond, Fred. Letz, 
Hon. F. C. Sherman, Joseph Lane, Luther Haven, H. D. Colvin, Hon. Van H. Hig- 
gins, Geo. Schneider, Perkins Bass, Hon. S. S. Hayes, Saml. Hoard, Philip Wads- 
worth, Jonathan Burr, Hon. John C. Haines, Hon. Perry H. Smith, General J. B. 
Turchin, M. D. Ogden, Walter Kimball, D. D. Driscoll, J. Linton Waters, Robert 
Forsyth, A. V. Towne, A. Shuman, J. L. Scripps, George C. Bates, J. C. Fargo, 
Colonel G. W. Smith, Charles Randolph, W. W. Bojington, General S. P. Bradley, 
W. F. Tucker, Benj. Lombard, W. C. Coolbaugh, A. D. Tittsworth, Benj. V. Page, 
J. L. Reynolds, John V. Farwell, H. E. Sargent, E. C. Earned, C. Wahl, Maj. Gen. 
Webster, Brig. Gen. Stolbrand, I. Y. Munn, F. A. Hoffman, J. K. Pollard, J. Y. 
Scammon, C. N. Holden. 

Secretaries— Joseph Medill, Charles L. Wilson, L. Brentano, J. W. Sheahan, and 
A. Worden. 

The exercises were the reading of the Emancipation Proclamation, the Last Inau- 
gural, the Declaration of Independence, and the delivery of the Oration. A mag- 
nificent feature of the day was the grand chorus of one thousand singers, with a 
monster orchestra, who gave, with thrilling effect, the patriotic songs on the pro- 
gramme. A grand banquet to the returned soldiers, in the adjoining Horticultural 
Hall, and a splendid exhibition of fireworks in the evening, were the closing observ- 
ances of the day. 

With this preface, we leave the reader to the enjoyment of the main feature of 
the occasion, preserved in the pages which follow. The Committee. 

ORATION. 

The President introduced the orator of the da}', Hon. Henry Winter 
Davis, as one who hailed from Maryland, but whose reputation was na- 
tional ; one who for many years has served his country faithfully in the 
councils of the Union. 

Mr. Davis spoke as follows : 

Fellow-Citizens, — It is with unspeakable joy that I to-day 
congratulate you upon this auspicious return of our national birtl> 
day, proclaimed in the midst of doubt and the clash of arms, cel- 
ebrated at the close of the Revolution when independence was 
accomplished, and now celebrated with additional joy, additional 
heartiness, and overflowing exultation at the second foundation 
of the American republic ; for to-day that Declaration, then a 
promise, spoken in the spirit of prophecy, belied by the facts that 
were all around it — to-day that Declaration is true in right and 
true in fact from one end of this broad land to the other — true 
now not only in Virginia, and in Maryland, and the Carolinas; 
not now limited to the Alleghanies and the coast; but true for 



566 LESSONS OF THE WAR, ETC. 

the whole American people, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and 
covering every inch of territory from Maine to the Gulf of Mex- 
ico — every where true in right and true in fact — bought with 
precious blood wrung from reluctant hands, strengthened by the 
heart's blood of many of your brothers and many of your sons, 
.through good report and through evil report, in the day of dark- 
ness and in the day of hope, till glorious light has crowned the 
cause with its final victory, and we meet here to-day to celebrate 
its jubilee. 

Fellow-citizens, the American republic rested, in the fall of the 
year 1860, as peacefully and as quietly as the infant on the moth- 
er's breast, not dreaming of war, with no weapons to grasp, with 
no arms provided, with, no army organized, with no generals to 
lead us save those at the plow, with no leaders but their enemies, 
in power, while a deep and wide-spread conspiracy, organized for 
years, was preparing to strike what it fondly hoped was the final 
blow at the integrity of the American republic and the glory of 
the American name. It proposed to expurgate the Declaration 
of Independence, and to declare that all men were not born free 
and equal ; it proposed to repeal the Constitution of the United 
States, which embodied one government for all of these States for- 
ever ; it proposed to defy the power of the government, and to as- 
sail the authority of the ballot-box with, the sword ; without a 
grievance, without a wrong, without a well-founded complaint, the 
conspirators against its existence had held the places of honor, 
had filled the positions of power, had dictated the policy of the 
government, till they aimed that blow at its being, so swiftly, so 
sharply, so deadly, that it had almost accomplished its purpose 
before you, in the great centre of the American republic, knew 
that the deadly blow was aimed, before you knew that the arm 
was raised to strike it. It was difficult for men to believe ; it 
was long before the idea sank into men's minds that such wicked- 
ness and such bloody purposes actually existed. But gradually 
the light dawned upon the public mind, and the people found that 
it was not mere braggadocio, that it was not all a game of brag. 
They then found that it meant a struggle of no ordinary magni- 
tude, a determination on the part of the South to stab the nation 
in a vital part ; in a word, that it was what we now know it to be. 
They found that the rebels had a thoroughly-prepared, a well- 
considered, a perfectly-adjusted plan to tear in pieces the Union ; 



LESSONS OF THE WAR, ETC. 567 

and instantly, as if by magic, from one end of this land to the oth- 
er, men arose in arms to offer their lives for the salvation of their 
country. Generals were improvised, and regiments raised, and 
armies created, until men were bewildered with their numbers, 
scarce believing in the magnitude of the power the republic was 
disclosing to put down its enemies. 

And yet, amid all this, there was a hesitation, a doubt in the 
minds of many, so deeply had it been grounded in the minds of 
the masses throughout the North, that whatever else might be 
touched, there was one emblem of royalty, one sign of aristocratic 
domination which must not be interfered with — that was slavery. 
So thoroughly were they convinced that the rebellion could not 
touch its strong-hold, that men were found picking their way ten- 
derly and carefully through the South, as if they were marching 
through a powder magazine with a lighted candle, and were guard- 
ing it carefully for fear of an explosion, which would hurt their 
enemies. While we were divided, they were united; we hesita- 
ted, while they were decided ; we sought to strike without doing 
them damage, they were aiming blows directly at the heart of the 
people; they fought to conquer, to destroy, we fought to save 
them ; we fought tenderly, carefully, dealing with them as our 
fellow-citizens, who we fondly supposed were misled in an evil 
hour — accidentally as it were — and that suddenly a sense of their 
iniquity would break in upon them, and that by-and-by they 
would return, and we should all repose again peacefully under the 
shadow of the old patriarchal institution. But gradually the pop- 
ular heart caught the real spirit of the rebellion, and their inspi- 
ration breathed itself in song. Around the camp-fires, from the 
solitary sentinel to the soldiers drawn up in battle array, the 
chords of the American heart were touched by the spirit of "Eally 
round the Flag, Boys," and that other inspiring heresy, "John 
Brown's Soul is Marching On," until the hearts of the people were 
warmed with its magic spell, and the people's voice reached and 
inspired the dull ears of those in power. Then, as the nation 
knew it was struggling, not only to retain reluctant States, but to 
expunge from its institutions that which made the Declaration of 
Independence a lie and a vain thing — then it was that the patri- 
otic men rallied to the support of the government ; and, though 
badly led, and badly directed, and often defeated and involved in 
disaster, still was heard the cry, " We come, three hundred thou- 



568 LESSONS OF THE WAE, ETC. 

sand more." They were ready to fill the graves on every battle- 
field till those who defied the national emblem should be laid 
low. Then it was they found that if there was division at the 
North, there was unity there too ; that the day of doubt had 
passed ; that if there had been hesitation it was gone, and merged 
into a strong, sober, stern resolution — that resolution of a great 
-people to die, but never to yield — the spirit that breathed in the 
men who stood at Marathon, and died on the field of Cannee that 
liberty might survive — the spirit which fired the heart of the 
French Eepublic when it defied Europe in arms seeking its over- 
throw — the resolution, which is that of all nations born to great- 
ness, to accept no peace they do not dictate, no peace that does not 
humble every rebel weapon that has been raised against the pow- 
er and majesty of the republic. And from that day the defend- 
ers of the cause, inspired by principle, have pursued energetically 
the contest, in the face of the hostility of all the nations of the 
world, and loud predictions of failure here, till that glorious con- 
summation has been attained which greets us here to-day. Not 
that blood has not flowed in abundance to secure it, for what fam- 
ily has not lost a brother, son, or husband, or some near bosom 
friend? This triumph has not been purchased lightly. It has 
been gained at the expense of much suffering and many tears ; it 
is the end of a great tragedy. These triumphs are secured with 
our blood. Like all those great results which are won on the 
fields of history by the nations destined to immortality, our em- 
pire has been secured by the sacrifice of the best and noblest of 
the land. And who does not, when contemplating these sad and 
yet ever-glorious battle-fields, every where see — who does not de- 
plore it with tears — that American blood has flowed on both sides ; 
that it was our brethren who were led astray, ruined, scourged to 
destruction by the Nemesis of History, which drives men to work 
out themselves the punishment of their own errors ? Who does 
not remember that they are sons of the same forefathers who 
fought for that very Union which they attacked and we defend- 
ed ? Any man who does not remember this lacks one half of the 
American heart. But, fellow-citizens, we have fought this fight 
once, and we have fought it forever. Every heart exultingly ex- 
claims, 

"No more the thirsty entrance of this soil 
Shall daub her lips with her own children's blood. 



LESSONS OF THE WAK, ETC. 569 

No more shall trenching war channel her fields, 
Nor bruise her flowerets with the armed hoofs 
Of hostile paces. Those opposed eyes, 
Which, like the meteors of a troubled heaven 
(All of one nature, of one substance bred), 
Did lately meet in the intestine shock, 
And furious close of civil butchery, 
Shall now, in mutual well-beseeming ranks, 
March all one way, and be no more opposed 
Against acquaintance, kindred, allies. 
The edge of war, like an ill-sheathed knife, 
No more shall cut his master." 

If this be prophecy or prayer, let all the people say " Amen," 
and pray that it may be so. 

We have passed, fellow -citizens, through the valley of the 
shadow of death ; harm has come nigh us, but it has not over- 
thrown us, and it is well now, as we pass out of the gloomy part 
of that valley, that we should, like the Pilgrim of the great 
"Progress," pause, as the sun has risen upon our steps, and look 
back to see the dangers from which we have been rescued, that 
we may be thankful for, and not proud of, the things we have 
accomplished. 

Many a delusion, many a false prophecy, many a treacherous 
declaration has been dispelled by the harsh collision of arms, and 
they are buried forever among the errors of the past, to be re- 
membered only that we may avoid them hereafter. Who now 
does not know that secession is not a peaceful remedy? Who 
now does not know that the rebellious South can not be con- 
quered ? Who now does not know that the way to preserve the 
bond of peace is not by compromise or concession, or by friendly 
proposals? Who does not know that the negro is a man? for 
he has proved his manhood at the point of the bayonet; not 
where the President proposed to place him, in forts or garrisons, 
but in the line of battle alongside of armed white men, charging 
just as deeply into the heart of the enemy's ranks as his white 
brethren, vindicating his right to manhood by the exercise of the 
highest prerogative of man — fearlessness in the presence of eter- 
nity, and of death which leads him there. We have learned 
something else: State rights are responsible to the bayonet. 
Those great organizations that insolently lifted their arms in the 
front of battle against the nation, where are they now? That 



570 LESSONS OF THE WAR, ETC. 

Virginia, the Old Dominion, with the master in its name, holding 
from George Washington till now hereditary power, the Mecca 
of Southern rights, the Palestine of the Southern religion, that 
"sacred soil," for violating which Ellsworth fell, where is now its 
proud motto, "Sic semper tyrannisf Her old dominion rent in 
twain, she lies under the heel of Liberty, and " tyrannis" is that 
Virginia, her slavery clean gone from the earth forever. So let 
it perish. Pierpont, a name unknown to her aristocracy, not in 
the line of her rulers by descent, a common man from across the 
mountains, not a native of the soil he now rules, was picked up 
by the loyal Virginians and created her master at the bidding of 
national necessity, and because the nation required that the old 
government of Virginia should cease to exist. States are immor- 
tal, but State governments, that are organized by men, and may 
be used for selfish purposes, perverted to the purposes of treason 
to defy the Union, are by the laws of the United States not im- 
mortal, but amenable to the laws as men for their acts, and die by 
treason. 

But, fellow-citizens, how have these results been accomplished ? 
Not by great leaders; not by wise statesmanship; not by far- 
seeing advisers; not by generals of illustrious renown, known to 
the world, whom it was an honor to follow. We had George 
Washington provided to lead our steps in infancy, but we had no 
George Washington to guide us through these awful struggles. 
No William the Silent to lift the standard before the failing heart 
of the people in despair ; no Richelieu or Chatham to organize 
victory by wise and efficient administration ; no far-sighted Con- 
gress prepared victory by wise organization beforehand, anticipa- 
ting the wants of the nation. We had, charged with the conduct 
of public affairs, honest, faithful, diligent, devoted, and now mar- 
tyred servants of the republic. But they did not initiate the 
movement which led to this great consummation ; it sprang from 
the popular heart, which compelled them to make war ; the im- 
pulse came from the masses of the people, and they freely poured 
out their treasure and the blood needed to carry on the war. It 
was the people who anticipated it, their instinct dictated it, their 
treasure supported it, and they demanded every measure, and 
sustained, without a murmur, every disappointment, and supplied 
money to fill up every waste and every loss. It is the greatest 
example in history of a great people, without leaders, selecting its 



LESSONS OF THE WAR, ETC. 571 

own instruments to accomplish the popular will. It was a great 
movement of the whole mass of the nation ; one whose progress 
was like the roll of the great Mississippi onward to the Gulf, irre- 
sistible because of its impetus and volume, and guided to its end 
by the hand of God. It stands before the world as a solitary ex- 
ample, beside the struggle of the French Eepublic, against those 
who sought its overthrow. 

We stand to-day before the nations of the world as the Amer- 
ican people never stood before. All Europe was opposed to us ; 
they hastened to vest our enemies with the rights of war ; they 
threw open their ports for their privateers ; they prepared in their 
machine-shops the materials for breaking our blockade ; they pre- 
pared the arms with which our enemies fought us ; and for four 
years they fitted out ships of war, and manned them with English 
sailors, to depredate on our commerce. They had an instinctive 
presentiment that our success was their overthrow ; they knew 
well that if the republic came safely out from this struggle, it 
would not suffice to tell the people that imperialism alone could 
keep order, that aristocracy alone insured a permanent govern- 
ment, that hereditary thrones alone could peacefully transmit 
power in a government ; for they would have, standing before 
them, unbroken in all its gorgeous panoply of war, and still more 
glorious in its civil garb than before, an illustrious example to the 
contrary. They would see thirty millions of American people 
choosing their own rulers, dictating their policy, redressing their 
own wrongs, plowing their own lands, forging their own arms, fill- 
ing the ranks of their own armies, creating their own generals, 
fighting their own battles, compelling submission to the laws they 
had made, and defying all nations to arrest them in their progress. 
They were too sure of their game ; they thought as the traitors 
here thought, that the South could not be conquered, and that the 
North would go to pieces in the collision, and therefore held their 
hands and did not intervene. They thought our day of doom 
was come, and it is not impossible that their error proved our sal- 
vation. But we will remember that it was their error and not 
their merit, and will visit its consequences upon them. No soon- 
er did they suppose the terrors of the American people w T ere gone, 
that the great aegis of our protection ceased to cover the repub- 
lics of America, than they began their work. Spain seized upon 
San Domingo, her ancient colony, and invaded Peru, whose inde- 



572 LESSONS OF THE WAR, ETC. 

pendence she had never recognized, reasserting her original title. 
France and England, under the pretext of playing the bailiff to 
collect clues for their subjects, conspired against the republic in 
Mexico, and, under the false pretext of carrying "order" into the 
midst of that distracted country, added new confusion to disturb 
the quiet which was settling down over that republic. Insidiously 
- they wrought with an armed power. Under the false pretense of 
a desire to establish peace, they have destroyed the last remnants 
of it, and with it the most free and liberal government that had 
ever attained a permanent foothold in Mexico. The Mexicans 
had just passed through such a struggle as we have here passed 
through. Their collision was with the Catholic Church, with the 
power of the priesthood, which held three fourths of their territo- 
ry, just as we have been driven into collision with the slave pow- 
er, which owned so much of our territory. They had succeeded 
in divesting that church of its political power, secularizing its 
lands and distributing them among the people, and inaugurated a 
just government, when Louis Napoleon, with the purpose of lim- 
iting our expansion and strengthening his imperial throne by its 
counterpart in America, refused to recognize the government of 
Juarez, imposed on the people an Austrian for their master, sup- 
ported him by French armies, boasted that order was founded in 
Mexico, and, with Mexico bleeding at his feet, referred to his name 
and history as a sufficient guarantee that he could impose no gov- 
ernment on the Mexicans against the will of the nation. He 
thought the world had forgotten December and the Boulevards, or 
perhaps they are not in his history. That mission of "restoring 
order" was undertaken by our European foes, who tenderly, 
calmly advised that we should not press the South to desperation, 
but should haste to make terms lest we should be destroyed. We 
dissembled our indignation at this grave menace and insult — with 
difficulty, but for the present perhaps not unwisely ; but that time 
of trial to the American republic is now over, and the people have 
not forgotten the insult, nor ceased to appreciate the greatness of 
the danger to republican institutions involved in the example of 
an imperial throne standing on the ruins of an American republic 
supported by European bayonets. If necessity imposed silence, 
to-day that necessity has ceased. When the armies of Sherman 
and of Grant paraded before the President's stand in Washington, 
in that grand review after their great victories, the representatives 



LESSONS OF THE WAR, ETC. 573 

of foreign powers stood at the back of the President ; and while 
every European face wore an aspect of polite resignation, our 
South American friends were radiant with joy, and avowed that 
our triumph was theirs. And whether it be to-day, or to-morrow, 
or next month, or next year ; whether Louis Napoleon shall suc- 
ceed or not in consolidating the throne of Maximilian ; no matter 
who may be in power, or who may assume to control the desti- 
nies of this nation ; no matter who may attempt to stop its onward 
march, or preach moderation or the danger of perpetual war, the 
introduction of a European prince into an American republic for 
the purpose of founding on its ruins a hereditary throne is an in- 
solent defiance of the declaration of President Monroe, and the 
American people are pledged to resent it. It is vain to attempt 
to adduce to us evidence that Mexico assents ; there is no dissent 
with the bayonet at the throat. No argument can be permitted 
to prove that submission to armed force is free choice. Let them 
withdraw their armies. Let them leave Mexico. If they don't 
like the state of anarchy which prevails there, let them leave it to 
its normal condition. It is not their right to interfere with the 
internal affairs of Mexico. It is a perpetual menace to us. If 
they need order, we prefer a different neighbor to Louis Napo- 
leon, the liberal Emperor of France. "We wish for no conquests, 
but we have established freedom here, and we will have freedom 
from here to Cape Horn. I desire no policy of conquest. I 
merely stand where President Monroe stood, where Henry Clay 
stood, where Daniel "Webster stood, where the Congress of '26 
stood, which sanctioned the Panama mission, in the application of 
this principle to Mexico, that the people are entitled to work out 
their own salvation in such form as they may see fit, and that Eu- 
ropean meddling with them is a menace to us. But we ■ do not 
recognize a monarchical power as a good nurse to put a republic 
to. These are the first results of the war. 

Fellow-citizens, we stand again in all our integrity and power 
before the nations of the world, desiring to war with nobody, but 
remembering that in our hour of need men tried to destroy us. 
Desiring to observe all the laws of neutrality, we are resolved that 
England shall accept and respect her own neutrality laws. Any 
rule will suit the American people except the insolence and ca- 
price of a power presuming to domineer over us. 

But, fellow-citizens, the war has taught other lessons than these. 



574 LESSONS OF THE WAR, ETC. 

It lias taught us lessons we must perforce read and remember, 
whether we would or not. Why is it that the American repub- 
lic, so peaceful, so just, so moderate, so wise, as it heretofore has 
been for eighty years of unbroken internal quiet, has been for the 
first time plunged into civil war? It is because we embodied in 
our institutions one which was not reconcilable with the princi- 
. pies on which they all rest. The unanimous declaration of the 
thirteen colonies of America consecrated forever as the ground- 
work of the nation the principles of personal freedom and govern- 
ment by law. Government by law we secured in the Constitu- 
tion, personal freedom we sacrificed to an existing interest, sup- 
posed to be temporary, admitted to be wrong, difficult of remedy, 
but to be remedied. But the expansion of our territory inspired 
that interest as it grew in strength, first with a desire for perma- 
nence, then with a desire for power. The addition of the great 
regions of Florida and Louisiana to the domain of the United 
States fired the blood of its supporters with the determination of 
ruling. It was resolved by them to become a power, and cease to 
be merely an interest. It could be tolerated as an interest, it 
could not be tolerated as a power, which by political coalition be- 
came the dominant power of the nation. It first asserted itself as 
a power in the great Missouri Compromise so long worshiped by 
all men as the emblem of our peace. Texas was its conquest. 
The compromise of 1850 was the recognition of its equality with 
freedom in disposing of the fortunes and fate of the nation. The 
repeal of the Missouri Compromise was its assertion, not merely 
that it was a power, but that it had power to rule. The war in 
Kansas was its struggle to assert, against a reluctant people, its 
right to rule. The Dred Scott decision was the sanction of its 
most insolent claims by the supreme judicial authority of the na- 
tion, before which bowed every dissenting voice in the South. It 
had made for itself a permanent home in the South, a home full 
of ideas and arguments for its maintenance and advancement ; it 
seized upon and taught the doctrine of State rights as one of its 
bulwarks ; it cultivated submission to the local authorities, so that 
in case of collision the men of the South might prefer their State 
to the nation. Slavery was first wrong, then excusable, then de- 
fensible, then defended by scriptural, historical, and political argu- 
ments, then advocated and vaunted as the highest development of 
the social organization. Every principle of human reason was 



LESSONS OF THE WAE, ETC. 575 

confounded in this deliberate attempt to make right of a wrong. 
It created a new theology, a new history, a new ethnology for 
itself. The Southern ethnology separated the negro from the 
human race; the Southern religion proclaimed the slave-trade a 
missionary enterprise; the new Southern morals proclaimed the 
duty of holding the negro, for his own benefit, as the highest of 
moral obligations; the new Southern theodicy deduced the high- 
est proofs of the wisdom of God from his placing the black man 
in subjection to the white ; the new Southern history made the 
chief purpose of the Constitution the protection of this interest; 
the new Southern political economy professed to have found in 
negro slavery that organization of labor for which the Old World 
had so long striven in vain ; the new Southern political philoso- 
phy added to Jefferson's enumeration of the inalienable rights of 
man that of the negro to a master. Admitted to be wrong, it was 
weak ; when merely excusable, the time would come when it 
would cease to be excused ; admitted defensible, it was still on 
the defensive ; but as & power it could control and assume its own 
position. Thus this interest, a flaw at first in the foundation of 
our great national temple of freedom, undermined its foundation, 
and threatened its overthrow. It was no longer an interest, but 
a power, ready to fight for empire, to assert in arms its authority. 
Fearful that the intrusion of new ideas might breed doubts, they 
surrounded their territory with Gorgons, hydras, chimeras dire, to 
repel Northern men : white men with free ideas could not work 
in the South ; the Southern sun was fatal to the men of the 
North ; the frightful pestilence walked in darkness to smite the 
stranger who ventured among them. They dreaded the intrusive 
eye of freedom, tolerated it only blindfold, and thus, firmly im- 
bued with convictions scientifically and logically wrought into a 
social system, strong in arguments for its support, at peace with 
their consciences, given over to believe a lie, a territory equal in 
area to the greatest empire in the world, filled with an energetic, 
brilliant, brave, and devoted people, educated in the idea that the 
State is supreme and could secede at will, and that even if the 
State had not that right, it could sanction, and by its authority, 
which they were bound to obey, excuse all who under its bidding 
took arms against the nation ; armed against moral reprobation 
by pride, strong against the laws of the land in arms, in the sym- 
pathy of many at the North, in a generation educated and devoted 



576 LESSONS OF THE WAR, ETC. 

to those ideas for which they were ready to die, they drew the 
sword, throwing away the scabbard, to assert that slavery is the 
true corner-stone of freedom. That corner-stone on which they 
sought to raise a new empire now lies crumbled- and shattered 
under the feet of advancing freedom. 

In the stagnant East these ideas could have lain side by side 
for generations, sleeping quietly as twin brothers ; for there, des- 
potism and slavery are as eternal as its deserts, and as shifting as 
their sands ; but in the fruitful and teeming West, the sun makes 
the tare grow as rankly and rapidly as the wheat. The same sun 
ripens the weeds and the corn together, and when the seed of the 
evil weeds are sown, they will come to maturity and destroy the 
good grain if the husbandman does not pluck them out. This has 
been our task for the four years past. During that time we have 
been persuaded by those who live far from the South, who know 
nothing of its moral atmosphere, nothing of the impulses which 
drive its people to action, that these men could be conciliated, that 
we could make compromises with them. They said, strike the 
arms from their hands and they would thenceforth quietly submit. 
It would suffice that the loyal men of the South should be armed, 
and the disloyal trodden down, to insure security for the future. 
What does history say of these views of Southern temper? There 
was not even an assault and battery committed on behalf of the 
United States, from the Potomac to the Gulf of Mexico. Where 
then were the loyal friends of the government? There were 
Union men ; but you must translate that into the language of the 
South. There were many among them who preferred that the 
government should not be broken up, but if it were to be broken 
up they were for the South. They preferred that there should 
be peace ; they were willing to vote that peace should continue, 
and with it the Union ; but if it were to be broken, then they 
would not fight against their brethren at home for the mainte- 
nance of the Union. They preferred peace at home and war with 
the United States, to war at home and peace with the United 
States. They loved the government, but they loved their State 
better; they were devoted to the nation, but more to their State. 
" Our people" was the phrase by which they designated the men 
of their own State, and "our enemies" that by which they spoke 
of those born under the same paternal government with them, the 
loyal men of the North. This temper of mind has not changed, 



LESSONS OF THE WAR, ETC. 577 

and any man, in authority or out of authority, who supposes that 
repentance has come by castigation, misreads the minds of the 
men of his own time, and is preparing ruin for himself and his 
land. . If the question be submitted to the vote of the Southern 
people to-day whether they will remain a part of the United States 
and celebrate with us this glorious day, or expunge from their 
calendar the Fourth of July, expurgate the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, restore their slavery system, and form an independent 
government, the vote would be overwhelming and unprecedented 
in favor of independence. If that is the sentiment of the South- 
ern people, men of America, look well where you tread. There 
is doubtless a division among them, but it is a division of political 
parties, more or less devoted to Southern ideas and Southern pow- 
er. Those who acquiesce readily, and those who acquiesce only 
under coercion — those who consider their cause hopeless and are 
disposed to put the best face they can upon it, and those who lie 
down to sleep with hatred in their hearts, and wake up to invite a 
French or English army to join with them in the destruction of 
the republic — these are the only divisions. I know the noble 
names of Petigru and Joshua Hill ; and when I have named these 
men, and added to them John Minor Botts and Governor Aiken, 
I name all I know in all the Southern country who have been so 
far friends of the nation that they closed their mouths, bowed 
their heads, and allowed the waters of strife to pass over them, 
trusting to God whether they should survive or perish. 

To that people our rulers are now proposing to extend the 
privilege of governing themselves and us — themselves and us ! ! 
There are precautions to be taken for the future, fellow-citizens. 
There is such a thing as " making haste slowly." There is such 
a thing as allowing men's tempers to cool, time to develop their 
purposes, time to pick out instruments on whom you can rely, to 
count heads and see where an election will land you. Do not 
then hasten it. Reinstated to-day in authority, read the transac- 
tions of the loyal Legislature of Virginia, and tell me how you are 
to get cordial support and sympathy from such men — men burn- 
ing with the passion of the war in every branch ; the men who 
are known enemies to the government every where elected to of- 
fices in every department of authority except the powerless, im- 
potent, and deluded governor. Every attempt to discriminate 
loyal from disloval was hooted down in the twinkling of an eye 

02 



578 



LESSONS OF THE WAE, ETC. 



at the first session ; mocking and jeering at the oath which was 
meant to separate the true from the false, the " test" oath was 
known as the " detested" oath in the vocabulary of loyal, reor- 
ganized Virginia. There are therefore precautions absolutely 
necessary. 

We have disposed of the doctrine of secession by the bayonet ; 
' but that their acute legal suggestion — that although the State has 
not the right to rebel, yet the citizens are bound to obey it, and it 
will stand between them and responsibility incurred in fighting 
for it against the nation — may be effectually put down, it must be 
refuted, as it only can be, by the judgment of death on their lead- 
ing traitor. I am not bloody-minded, gentlemen, and I think 
mere personal punishment at the end of a war in which two or 
three hundred thousand men have been laid in bloody graves has 
no relation to the ordinary purposes of punishment. If you could 
punish so as to break and destroy the power of the " aristocracy" 
which inaugurated the war, it were well ; but Congress has re- 
fused to pass the law which deprived them of their citizenship, 
and now the supreme law of the land forbids it, the opportunity 
is gone, and gone forever. They have suffered, and suffered much, 
by the confiscation of their slaves. But the mere hanging of men 
has no power to prevent such a rebellion as this, wherein men 
have staked hundreds of thousands of lives on the issue and died 
glorying in their cause. By hanging them you would be only 
multiplying the number of martyrs without materially diminish- 
ing that of criminals. But they should be stamped with the foul 
brand of treason, not allowed to glory over their struggle against 
the nation, to remain the heroes of the South, as they are at this 
day. When the vanquished rebel can hang his sword over his 
door, and in after years boast of it to his grandchildren, you have 
left the seeds of future rebellion, the temptation of impunity for 
the future ; and it is material that these great words of the Con- 
stitution, " that this Constitution, and the laws of the United States 
made in pursuance thereof, shall be the supreme law of the land," 
shall be understood to mean what they say, to be resisted by no 
wire-drawn pleas, to be avoided by no plea of State rights, to be 
stripped of authority by no impunity claimed under any obliga- 
tion to obey the Constitution of the State ; so that the man who 
takes his musket to resist it shall know that he commits the crime, 
and not his State. The judgment of the court will clear him of 



LESSONS OF THE WAK, ETC. 579 

every delusion on the subject, so that hereafter he will not be 
troubled by metaphysical arguments on State rights, which are 
national wrongs, but he may go to his doom justly, as well as le- 
gally. The kindly advice of our English cousins and our French 
friends, preaching moderation in the hour of victory, is good, but 
we can not but remember that their friends are those who are to 
suffer. Hopes of foreign aid from those powers weighed heavily 
in causing the rebellion, and they naturally have an interest in 
preventing the extreme penalty of the law from falling on the 
heads of those they tempted and deserted. We can understand 
that they have an interest in still keeping open a cleavage in the 
fast-closing rock of the republic, wherein foreign powers may- 
again force a lever to shake the republic to its foundations. Fel- 
low-citizens, when we feel the need of it, we will ask their advice, 
but we look alone to our laws for the rule of our action, and to the 
moderation of the people to prevent the stain of useless blood 
upon our hands. Let England remember Napoleon, and Emmett, 
and O'Brien ; the massacred Indians, who only fought to throw 
off a foreign yoke, which England feared we would impose upon 
the South. Let Louis Napoleon, too, remember Ney and Abd el 
Kader, the massacre of the Boulevards and the deportation of one 
half the members of the Assembly of France, as the measure of 
French mercy. "We are to-day a nation in spite of their advice, 
their enmity, and their efforts : silence would better become them, 
saving us the trouble of flinging their crimes in their teeth, to ex- 
pose the motives of their unasked advice. 

That disposes of one great precautionary measure. 

We can not govern this immense region by military power. 
That would be to create proconsuls to whom armies will become 
devoted, in whom the spirit of ambitious power will grow and be- 
come strong, and one of whom may, like Csesar, march across the 
Eubicon on the insidious pretext of the public good, when Amer- 
ica may be as Eome was. Military government in vast region? 
of territory, over great populations, is inconsistent not only with 
the principles of our institutions, but with the permanence and 
integrity of the American government, and therefore must be ex- 
cluded from every body's mind. If you wish a temporary civil 
government, let it be organized by law ; but we must recognize 
not only personal freedom, but the principles of self-government — the 
right of the People to rule. We want no rebel State govern- 



580 LESSONS OF THE WAR, ETC. 

merit ; we want still less a military government ; a rebel govern- 
ment is safer than a military government. "We do not want oli- 
garchies of professed Union men, who have been so low down out 
of sight that nobody can divine their relations to the rebellion, or 
men who treacherously sympathized with the power that was, and 
now meanly seek to serve the power that is. We want the free 
government of the loyal men of the South who are on our side, 
who will draw the sword for us, and will maintain our rights 
where they are threatened, and are powerful enough to maintain 
the authority of the State government at home. There is no white 
population at the South, no great mass of it any where, who will 
conform to these conditions. After you have erased from the list , 
of voters every man you can clearly prove to have been a seces- 
sionist, after you have sifted clear all you can call the loyal men, 
you have men who have sympathized with rebellion, have given 
it their countenance, if not their active aid, by their arms and their 
money ; can they be relied on in any emergency ? The Seces- 
sionists of the South are the heroes of the South, toasted, feted, 
worshiped. This day Eobert E. Lee could carry every electoral 
vote of every Southern State for the Presidency of the United 
States, and I would not swear he could not carry some Northern 
■ States I could name. Under a reorganization on the basis of the 
white population, the South will be more united and powerful 
than when she drew the sword. 

But there is a mass of population there that is on the side of 
the United States, against all white men at the South, whether 
Union or Secession, who to-day have a part in the Declaration of 
Independence which they never had before, and which they have 
earned on the battle-field by the side of these gentlemen bearing 
the uniforms of the nation. On many a bloody battle-field they 
have proven that they are men, not beasts. Will any body on 
this subject venture to moot the small paltry question that hith- 
erto has divided Illinois, and wearied the people of other States, 
touching the voting of a handful of negroes lost in the midst of 
white millions ? Is that the way to state a grave national ques- 
tion ? or is it wise in these gentlemen of the abolition schools to 
be always talking of justice and humanity to the negro ? as if jus- 
tice or humanity ever determined any great question in the world, 
or as if it were the rights of the negro, not our safety, which is at 
stake! It is not a question of justice, but of political dynamics. 



LESSONS OF THE WAE, ETC. 581 

It is a question of power, not of right — a question of salvation, 
not of morals. The alternatives are before us of a republican 
friendly government, or a hostile oligarchy in the South. 

No State government has ever been recognized which ostra- 
cized a majority or any great mass of the people. When slavery 
existed, slaves were merged in the master. But the right of the 
State to ostracize a great mass of free negroes has never been rec- 
ognized. They were a handful every where but in Maryland — 
and there they voted with the whites on the adoption of the Constitution 
of the United States. If this precedent be set now, it is for the first 
time to be set. "When negroes become free, they become a part 
of the people of the nation, and to ostracize them is to sanction a 
principle fatal to American free government. 

In South Carolina there are twice as many negroes as whites ; 
in Mississippi there are more negroes than whites ; in Alabama, 
in Louisiana, and in Georgia they are nearly equal. They are 
now in sufficient numbers at the South to control the result of any 
election. " They will vote with their masters," insidious gentle- 
men tell us ; then at least let their masters be under the necessity 
of touching their hats to them to get their votes. " They are not 
intelligent enough to vote," another says. They know, fellow- 
citizens, a gray uniform from a blue one. They know a Yankee 
from their masters. They have fought well under Yankee lead- 
ership ; maybe they can vote as intelligently under Yankee lead- 
ership. They are not spread in equal masses over the Southern 
country, but they are congregated in particular districts that bor- 
der the Atlantic, the Gulf, and the Mississippi, and are in immense 
majorities in fully one third of the congressional districts of the 
South. They can break the terrible unity of the Southern vote 
that plunged us into the rebellion. Men who are not capable of 
understanding considerations like these had better go and whine 
about negro votes. I have seen about as much of negroes as any 
of you, have lived as near them, and suppose I have as much prej- 
udice toward them as any of you ; but to talk of this after we 
have had to call them to our aid in putting down the rebellion, is 
either driveling folly or infinite meanness. If you did not wish 
to have the negro hereafter enjoy the rights of a man, why did 
you bring him on the battle-field ? You, white men of Illinois, 
why did you not have the quota of your State increased, so that 
the negro should not be needed ? We of Maryland carried eman- 



532 LESSONS OF THE WAE, ETC. 

cipation by going to the poor white men in the southern portion 
of the State, and showing them that the negro could relieve them 
from military service. They did not stop to discuss his right to 
political privileges then. If he is their and your equal on the 
battle-field, in the service of the country, he is, and should be, at 
the ballot-box ; and if he is not your equal on the battle-field, 
then you have cheated the United States, to the injury of the na- 
tional cause, to save yourselves from service. 

There is nothing in President Johnson's proclamation which 
assumes to conclude the judgment of the Congress of the United 
States on the recognition of State governments in the rebel States. 
He may have had more confidence in the white people of the 
South than I have — he may have desired to give them a golden 
opportunity of refuting every slander and silencing every doubt 
regarding their loyalty. He might have a hope that when they 
should be called upon to vote on their Constitutions under his 
proclamation, to be ready to present them to Congress in the form 
of petitions, for they would be nothing else ; that, seeing the signs 
of the times, and what justice and humanity require, or rather 
what the people of the North will suppose their safety requires, 
they would incorporate universal suffrage as the basis of their 
Constitutions. I shall rejoice with him if that result shall come 
about, but I am far from expecting it. I will believe, until I learn 
the contrary, that that was his purpose. I will not believe the 
declaration of any person who says he is opposed to it. He knows 
that the only authority that can recognize State governments at 
the South is the Congress which admits their representatives and 
senators ; that it must judge of the republicanism of their form 
of government. I turn to that august assembly with some doubt, 
but with earnest hopes, and I appeal to it to be ready for any 
emergency, to be caught by no snare, to yield to no solicitations ; 
not to take any man's declaration as to the safety of trusting the 
whole mass of the rebels of the South with the control of the 
Southern States, but to remember that a revolutionary minority 
can and will throw almost insurmountable obstacles in the way 
of legislation ; that the Southern delegations, joined with interest- 
ed and discontented men from the North, may clog and even ar- 
rest the wheels of government on any bill ; that they can organ- 
ize a powerful opposition to the payment of our national debt, and 
the imposition of taxes, unless we agree to their demands to rein- 



LESSONS OF THE WAR, ETC. 533 

state rebel officers, place their wounded on your pension lists, or 
indemnify slaveholders for their slaves. I pray these gentlemen 
to look this thing in the eye, and if they have no regard for "jus- 
tice and humanity," I would say to them, I, like you, gentlemen, 
am no enthusiast. I am very little of a philanthropist. I am 
not convinced of the intellectual superiority of the negro over the 
white ; but I know that his vote is important, and if I have not 
much respect for justice and humanity, I have great regard for the 
5-20s ; I have great respect for the integrity of the government 
and the possibility of carrying on its machinery. If the Constitu- 
tions do not give the mass of the negroes the right of voting on 
equal terms with the loyal white men (not those who can read, 
where it has been a penitentiary offense to teach one to read for 
twenty years — that is trifling with grave matters — but that mass 
of the negro population whom we subjected to the draft, and at 
whose hands we sought aid in our hour of weakness) the safety 
of the nation requires, republican principles require, that no such 
government shall be recognized as republican in form, that no 
representative or senator from such a State shall be admitted to 
either House, or even complimented with the privileges of the 
floor. 

We need the votes of all the colored people ; it is numbers, not 
intelligence, that count at the ballot-box ; it is right intention, and 
not philosophic judgment, that casts the vote. More glorious 
still would it be for Congress to follow the great example we 
have just set, of abolishing slavery by an amendment of the Con- 
stitution. Let it pass by a two-thirds majority, in both houses of 
Congress, an amendment of the Constitution consecrating forever 
the mass of the people as the basis of the republican government 
of the United States, and submit it this very coming winter, be- 
fore the Legislatures adjourn, for their ratification. And when it 
shall have received the assent of three fourths of those now rep- 
resented in Congress, let Congress instantly proclaim it as the 
fundamental law of the land, valid and binding as the Constitu- 
tion itself, of which they will thus have made it a part, under 
which they sit, of which no State caprice, no question of political 
parties, nothing in the future, except the triumph of slavery over 
free institutions, can ever shake or call in question. Then all the 
principles of the Declaration of Independence will be executed ; 
this government will rest on the right of individual liberty, and 



584 LESSONS OE THE WAR, ETC. 

the right of every man to bear a share in the government of the 
country whose laws he obeys and whose bayonet in the hour of 
danger he bears. And the personal freedom which the dark 
children of the republic have won by our blood and theirs will 
not be a vain mockery, exposed to violation at the caprice of their 
masters, enthroned in the Legislature, on the bench, and in the 
executive chamber, but, secured by the arms they hold and the 
ballot they cast, will be Liberty guarded by Power. 



THE NECESSITY OF UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE 
IN RECONSTRUCTION. 

In October Mr. Davis again published his views in relation to the re- 
construction of the States lately in rebellion, insisting on the necessity 
of suffrage for the colored race as an indispensable condition in re-estab- 
lishing the federal relations of those States. 

His letter was addressed to the editor of the (New York) Nation, and 
appeared in that journal in the form here following. It is the last paper 
on any public matter which he wrote or designed for publication. 

To the Editor of The Nation : 

My extreme reluctance to intrude on the public where I am 
not responsible for results has hitherto withheld me from offering 
to you the following communication. 

The Connecticut vote has solved my doubts and removed my 
hesitations. It reveals the fact that the great body of the Repub- 
licans are true to their principles, but that there is an unreliable 
minority in our ranks willing to unite with the enemies of the 
country to prevent us from consolidating our victory and secur- 
ing its fruits. These two elements will, I fear, be found to divide 
our friends in Congress. Our great majority there can be broken 
only by a great desertion. A few we may expect to be disloyal. 
We may trust, however, that enough will not join those who have 
vilified us for four years to place them in control of the houses. 
If they do, then Connecticut is the emblem of the fate of our cause, 
and the same coalition which perpetuated there the seeds of dis- 
cord will prevent our rooting them out forever from the nation. 

In Connecticut no practical importance attaches to the negro 
vote, and old prejudice was free to assert its power. But in the 
Southern States lately in rebellion the negro population is a con- 
trolling power, if properly organized, and endowed with arms and 
ballots. It is the only power on which the United States can rely 
there in the event of a renewed rebellion. It is the only body of 
people who can give the white minority of loyal men a voice in 
the nation, and prevent them from being overwhelmed and ostra- 



586 THE NECESSITY OF UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE, ETC. 

cized by the hostile majority. It is the only body of natural 
friends of the United States in all those States, for its freedom de- 
pends on the integrity of the Union. It is the only body from 
■which a Eepublican vote can be expected in any of those States, 
for the mass of whites, loyal as well as disloyal, hate and vilify 
us, while the negroes know that their liberty is our gift, and that 
as surely as it would cease on disunion, so surely its safety and 
enjoyment would be jeoparded and impaired by the accession to 
power in the United States of the old coalition of their masters in 
possession of the Southern States, and the Democrats holding 
enough of the Northern States to elect a President or control ei- 
ther house of Congress. 

The tone of the Southern press — now merely muttering be- 
tween bayonets — is that of execration against the Eepublicans, 
while unanimous in supporting the President they elected ; and 
to overlook this manifestation of Southern temper in dealing with 
their restoration to political power is to seal our own death-war- 
rant, and secure the triumph of our opponents and of the enemies 
of the country for a generation. This grave question is to be set- 
tled within the next session of Congress, and probably in its ear- 
lier weeks. They who elected the President stood confounded 
and divided by the policy he has dictated to them for its solution. 
The North Carolina proclamation they tolerated as an experi- 
ment, till it has indurated into a policy executed in every State 
which rebelled, and supported by every Northern Democrat and 
every rebel pretending to loyalty. In words, the proclamations 
summon that " portion of the people who are loyal" to reorganize 
the State governments ; but in reality they exclude the whole 
negro population, half the aggregate population, and nearly the 
whole of those who have always been loyal in those States. Un- 
der these 'proclamations, therefore, no republican form of government is 
possible. 

The only alternatives are an oligarchy of loyal whites or an ar- 
istocracy of hostile whites. The one is loyal, but is not republi- 
can ; the other is neither loyal nor republican. The former Pres- 
ident Lincoln organized in Virginia and Louisiana ; the President 
is organizing under his proclamations the latter. The legal effect 
of their recognition is to restore the State governments to those 
whom we have just expelled from them, to subject the emanci- 
pated negroes to th,e discriminating legislation of their masters, to 



THE NECESSITY OF UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE, ETC. 537 

continue their domination over the loyal minority, to guarantee 
to them the right to represent, now three fifths, and at the next 
census the whole of the disfranchised negroes, and to admit to 
Congress votes enough to compel equality, at the peril of anarchy, 
between loyalty and disloyalty. They were our armed enemies 
when Lee surrendered; they are now our disarmed enemies. 
They are now for independence and slavery, and against union 
and freedom ; they acquiesce in both till time or disaster gives 
them opportunity to realize their hopes, and till then their interest 
and purpose are to obliterate every distinction between those who 
rebelled and those who put down the rebellion. In all the South 
the only mass of the population interested and able to foil these 
designs is the negroes whom the President has disfranchised. 

"Whatever his purpose may be, his policy is that of our enemies. 
His apologists say the President is in favor of negro suffrage, but 
that is small comfort if his proclamations exclude it. We remem- 
ber his declaration that traitors should be punished, yet none are 
punished ; that only loyal men should control the States, yet he 
has delivered them to the disloyal ; that the aristocracy should be 
pulled down, yet he has put it in power again ; that its possessions 
should be divided among Northern laborers of all colors, yet the 
negroes are still a landless, homeless class ; that he was opposed 
to military commissions, yet they still defile the land, and others 
for higher victims are said to be in preparation ! The President's 
words are, therefore, uncertain guides to his conduct. His apolo- 
gists say, to the States alone belongs the question of suffrage, and 
the President left it to the people interested in it. But that is 
what the President did not do. The negroes of the States which 
rebelled form in some States a majority, in others a half, in all a 
vast, powerful, and loyal body of citizens, and to them he has not 
left it. On the contrary, he has left them to the will of their mas- 
ters. It is true the President has no power to dictate who shall 
vote, but it is equally true that he has no power to dictate who 
shall not vote. He has as much power to admit as to exclude. His 
apologists assure us it was in obedience to the State Constitutions, 
which survive the State governments. But the President's proc- 
lamations do not say so, and his conduct says to the contrary. 
He did not obey the Constitution in making the oath a qualifica- 
tion of suffrage, nor in authorizing the provisional governor to 
determine the loyalty of voters, nor in appointing him to make 



588 THE NECESSITY OF UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE, ETC. 

rules for convening the Convention, nor in directing it to be con- 
vened at all, nor in requiring it to prohibit slavery ; and it is non- 
sense to say if he was not bound on these points he was bound on 
negro suffrage. His whole conduct was a usurpation, but it was 
no more usurpation to direct his agents to receive than to refuse 
negro votes. 

„ The suggestion that the Constitutions survive the governments 
is at once absurd and dangerous. The governments ceased to ex- 
ist because they disowned their subordination to the United States 
in point of law. Our arms expelled them as usurpations in point 
of fact. The Constitutions were Constitutions of those govern- 
ments, and of nothing else. If they did not constitute those gov- 
ernments they constituted nothing. A Constitution of nothing is 
nothing. A Constitution which does not constitute is a contradic- 
tion in terms. Such are the absurdities of this new form of South- 
ern Constitutional metaphysics ! 

Our ordinary language is elliptical. We speak of a Constitu- 
tion, but that means nothing till we add, of what. We mean a 
Constitution of government ; and the moment we say what we mean, 
the folly of a Constitution surviving the government is apparent. 
When the rebellion usurped power in the States, the State gov- 
ernments ceased to exist ; the Constitutions became dead forms ; 
the line of official transmission of powers was broken ; there ceased 
to be any person designated to renew the functions of govern- 
ment, and they could never be renewed till the people constituted 
anew the governments, or Congress, in executing its guarantee, 
directed such governments to be constituted. For a government 
is certain men charged with certain powers. A Constitution of 
government is the law creating the powers and designating the 
men to execute them ; and without the men the government and 
the Constitution are alike nonentities. 

But the view is also dangerous. For if the Constitutions con- 
tinue in force, then the representatives and senators elected under 
them are entitled to appear in their seats, require their names to 
be called, and to vote on the simple production of their certificates. 
It is not necessary that Congress should recognize governments 
in those States ; for the old governments which it has heretofore 
recognized continue, and to recognize others is to oust them by 
revolution. This has always been the view of the Democratic 
allies of the rebels ; but it is now, for the first time, presented for 



THE NECESSITY OF UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE, ETC. 589 

the approval of the Kepublicans. The President had not thought 
of this view when he made the prohibition of slavery a condition 
of reorganization ; and if he did not include negro suffrage in the 
conditions, it was not because he had not as much power, but less 
inclination to do it. Nothing is more true than that the question 
of suffrage belongs to the States, but it is equally true that Con- 
gress is the exclusive judge of the compatibility of their solution 
of it with republican principles. The States have the right to 
prescribe who shall vote, but they have no right so to exercise it 
as to create an oligarchy or an aristocracy instead of a republican 
form of government: and it is the right and the duty of Congress 
to judge this question ; and its judgment is final and conclusive 
on all departments of the government. If Congress thinks the 
State has constituted an oligarchy or an aristocracy by its law of 
* suffrage, it is entitled and bound to refuse to recognize it, to an- 
nul the law, rescue the people from its power, and prescribe meas- 
ures and conditions for the organization of a government, repub- 
lican in form in its judgment, on American principles. This judg- 
ment it is the duty of the President to execute ; over it he has no 
power. It is the duty of guaranteeing republican government in 
the States which gives Congress this high jurisdiction ; and the 
right of determining who are the representatives and senators car- 
ries with it the exclusive right of determining which is the consti- 
tutional, that is, the republican government of a State, for other- 
wise it might find itself compelled to admit representatives and 
senators of States whose governments are not republican in form 
or substance in its opinion. 

It is therefore clear that the President is wholly beyond the 
sphere of his power in every step in reorganizing State govern- 
ments ; for each step is either legal and binding on Congress, or 
illegal and a nullity ; and as it can not bind Congress, it is a nul- 
lity and an illegality. It is therefore frivolous to say the Presi- 
dent could do nothing but what he did. He could have done 
nothing. It was his duty to have done nothing. His intermed- 
dling has gravely complicated the question of what is republican 
government with the claims of persons to seats and of parties to 
votes. But this does not vary the question, and it must be met 
as it is presented. Eepublican principles and national interests 
alike forbid the acceptance of the President's plan. That is the 
recognition by Congress of the principle that State governments 



590 THE NECESSITY OF UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE, ETC. 

which ostracize a majority, or a half, or a great mass of citizens, 
and subject them to the absolute government of others, is repub- 
lican in form. That principle has never yet been acknowledged 
by any Congress. No State government has ever been recog- 
nized by Congress which ostracized the great mass of the ^;eop?e, 
white or black. It is not the exclusion from political power 
merely which is the test, but the exclusion of great masses of cit- 
izens. 

A State may arbitrarily exclude from power one man, or a 
family, or a thousand families ; or it may exclude from power a 
greater proportion of those who have renounced their allegiance 
and defied its laws, and yet not affect the republican character of 
the government. But republican government in the American 
sense is the government by the mass of citizens through their rep- 
resentatives. Whenever, therefore, the mass of the citizens, or * 
any great proportion of them, is excluded from political power, 
yet required to submit to its laws, the government ceases to be 
republican, and Congress can not recognize it as such. Here the 
question is not of the rights of man to a voice in the govern- 
ment, but of the meaning of republican government required to 
be guaranteed in the Constitution. 

Connecticut has just refused to admit negroes to vote ; but that 
does not touch the republicanism of her government, for the per- 
sons excluded form no material or appreciable portion of her cit- 
izens. But negro suffrage is one thing in Connecticut and anoth- 
er thing in South Carolina. In the latter State, the negro citizens 
form two thirds of the whole body of citizens. To deny them a 
vote and subject them to the will of the one third is absolutely in 
conflict with a republican form of government. It is not merely 
an aristocracy of race, it is an oligarchy. If the Constitution of 
the United States permits the ostracizing of two thirds of the cit- 
izens and their subjection to one third, the guarantee is one of 
mere form. A tenth may as well rule as a third, or one man as 
well as a tenth. 

It is an accident that the line of disfranchisement and color are 
the same ; it is not a question of race, but of republicanism. If 
two thirds who are black may be excluded in South Carolina, 
two thirds who are white may be excluded by the blacks in North 
Carolina, and one is just as republican as the other. The Consti- 
tution makes no distinction of color. Its only distinction is that 



THE NECESSITY OF UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE, ETC. 591 

between free and slave inhabitants. The slaves were always ex- 
cluded irrespective of numbers, for they were not citizens. But 
free negroes were citizens of the United States. They were never 
declared by any State not to be citizens 'at the time of the adop- 
tion of the Constitution. They have never been declared not to 
be citizens by any department of the government. The Dred 
Scott case has been ignorantly quoted to settle that point ; but it 
decided not that a free negro could not be a citizen, but that a slave 
is not a citizen ; and nobody ever supposed he could be. But free 
negroes are citizens of the United States by the unanimous judg- 
ment of all departments of the government. That is now a set- 
tled point. And the Constitution draws no distinction between a 
black citizen and a white citizen. Congress has never acknowl- 
edged a State government to be republican which ostracized two 
thirds, or a half, or one third of its citizens. At the adoption of 
the Constitution the free negroes were in no state a tenth of the 
whole population. In Virginia they were one to thirty -six; in 
South Carolina one to seventy-seven ; in Georgia one to one hun- 
dred and twenty-eight ; and they voted in neither State, though 
in Virginia declared by law to be citizens. In Maryland they 
were one to twenty-five ; in North Carolina one to sixty ; and 
they voted in both. The largest proportion excluded at that time 
was in Delaware, where they were one to eleven. In Tennessee, 
the first State admitted, they were one to nine, and they voted. In 
Kentucky, the next State, they were excluded ; but they were 
only one to five hundred and twenty-six. Even when Louisiana 
was admitted — the great prize of the ambitious slave power — the 
ratio was only one to seven. 

But now Congress is asked to guarantee as republican such des- 
potisms as these : In North Carolina 631,000 citizens ostracize 
331,000 citizens. In Virginia 719,000 citizens ostracize 533,000 
citizens. In Alabama 596,000 citizens ostracize 437,000 citizens. 
In Georgia 591,000 citizens ostracize 465,000 citizens. In Loui- 
siana 357,000 citizens ostracize 350,000 citizens. In Mississippi 
353,000 citizens ostracize 436,000 citizens. In South Carolina 
291,000 citizens ostracize 411,000 citizens. 

It would be just as republican to reverse the numbers ; and if 
we have no respect for republican principle, common sense would 
require that we, holding the government, should vest our friends 
with the State governments and ostracize our opponents. The 



592 THE NECESSITY OF UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE, ETC. 

President asks us to ostracize our friends and place our enemies 
over their heads ! Either course leaves republican government 
without any guarantee of its substance. It is vain to attempt to 
cover such iniquities as those by the example of the freehold or 
property qualifications formerly existing in some States. They 
might doubtless be pushed to the extent of impeaching the char- 
acter of the government ; but hitherto they have never in the 
United States gone so far as to require the interposition of Con- 
gress. They never excluded any such masses of population as 
are ostracized by the President's plan, and they ostracized nobody. 
Every one could vote on getting the requisite property, and that 
was beyond nobody's reach. But the negro citizens are ostra- 
cized, they and their posterity forever, even where two thirds of 
the people. It is therefore impossible for republicans to recog- 
nize the President's governments. Nor ought they to feel the 
least hesitation in rejecting them, for the President's intermed- 
dling is wholly illegal ; it is an assumption to dictate to Congress 
respecting its members ; and what has been done is a vain form, 
having no claim to legal authority till Congress by recognizing it 
gives it legal force. These mushroom governments play at gov- 
erning the Southern States. It is plain the President treats them 
not as legal and authoritative governments, but as his puppets, 
whose acts he annuls when they don't suit him. Congress, then, 
is free, and bound to treat them as mere nullities — to brush them 
away as so many cobwebs, and on the cleared field to mark out 
the foundations of republican principles on which the government 
should be erected. The objects to be kept in view are to break 
the force and unity of the rebel vote in Congress ; to rescue the 
States from its domination ; and to place in the hands of the col- 
ored population political power for their protection and our safe- 
tj. Ketaining the States under military power postpones the first 
clanger, but it involves a greater. Such rule continued long over 
such vast populations must destroy every vestige of republican 
government. The military commissions which still defy the law, 
under the authority of the President, and, without the frivolous 
apology of actual host lities, inflict punishments unknown to the 
law for acts displeasing to the President, are now fast unsettling 
the foundations of national freedom and personal security. If 
military government be continued in the rebel States, the idea of 
government bylaw will die out from the land, and the President's 



THE NECESSITY OF UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE, ETC. 593 

will be the only law. I prefer to risk the negroes under their 
masters and the country to the rebel vote in Congress, rather than 
subject loyal negroes and disloyal whites to the common despot- 
ism of military government, and expose the North to the dangers 
of tolerating and organizing such a despotism. Discarding, there- 
fore, the horrible thought of military government as one the peo- 
ple ought not to tolerate, and will not tolerate, how can Congress 
paralyze the dangerous vote ? It can amend the Constitution so 
as to apportion representation according to the persons who are 
allowed to vote. Mr. Sloan moved this last winter, but it never 
came to a vote. But that leaves the States in the hands of the 
disaffected. That could be avoided in the opinion of some by ex- 
cluding disloyal men who have been engaged in the rebellion from 
power in the States. But the loyal white population are so mere 
a handful in the midst of the disaffected mass as to be wholly un- 
able to administer the government and enforce submission to the 
laws, and the pressure of public opinion would compel them to 
open the door to the excluded mass. That attempt has so result- 
ed in Virginia and Louisiana, where Governor Pierpont and Gen- 
eral Banks pursued that policy. They merely created a tempo- 
rary and powerless oligarchy. But it would fail in one other ma- 
terial object. The negro population would still be without a voice 
or a guarantee for any right. It is necessary, therefore, at once to 
satisfy republican principles, rescue the States from rebel domination, 
secure Congress against their undivided and hostile vote, protect the 
rights of the .negro population, and create a body of friends for the 
United States, interested to fight for its supremacy, that Congress should 
require the States to be reorganized on the basis of universal suffrage, 
and that it should refuse to recognize any government which does 
not recognize that. It should then secure this permanent founda- 
tion of American republicanism against the mutations of polit- 
ical life and the local hostilities in the Southern States by pro- 
posing an amendment to the Constitution, consecrating it forever 
as the criterion and condition of republican government in every 
State. 

These measures are the necessary buttresses for the support of 
that prohibiting slavery. Without them it will totter and may 
fall, and certainly must fail to secure real liberty and equality be- 
fore the law. Power alone is security, and with it comes respect, 
and dignity, and education. They who propose to postpone ne- 

P p 



594 THE NECESSITY OF UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE, ETC. 

gro suffrage till the negro is educated, need political education 
more than the negro. I think our only safety is in confining our 
efforts to these measures. It is too late to break the power of the 
Southern aristocracy by depriving their leaders of citizenship. 
Confiscation was never possible unless by partition of the lands 
among the negroes, and that Congress feared to enact. To sell a 
continent is impossible without a continent of buyers ; and the 
Taws are and will remain in the President's hands mere political 
thumb-screws to extort votes more powerful than all his patron- 
age. All that remains open is to balance the power of the disaf- 
fected aristocracy by the resident mass of loyal negroes armed 
with the ballot and bayonet. 

It is quite certain the President does not mean to insist on this. 
If his proclamations were an experiment on the temper of the 
white population, he is satisfied with facts which dismay his 
friends. He is so impatient of contradiction that loyal warnings 
are become "pestilent and malignant utterances.' 1 '' He is experi- 
menting noiv on nothing but the patience of the Republicans and 
the support of the Democrats. Of the latter he is receiving daily 
gratifying assurances. Of course, he is not thinking of joining 
the Democrats, for that would be going into a minority. But 
neither does he seem to be devoted to the Republicans. His pol- 
icy is that of the Democrats, and his hope is to induce the Repub- 
licans to abandon their principles and unite with him in execu- 
ting that of the Democrats. How many of the Republicans will 
unite with the Democrats to reinstate the representatives of the 
rebellion in power, in order that they may unite with the Demo- 
crats to expel us from power, remains to be seen. If enough to 
give the President a majority, a counter revolution is effected, 
which postpones the fruits of the war for a generation — it may be, 
then to be wrung from those in power by another civil war. It 
is possible the President may mean to disappoint the hopes of 
the Democrats, but it is not safe for Republicans to stake their 
cause on that doubtful and improbable chance. If he persevere, 
they must be ready to defy a most formidable coalition ; for the 
Southern representatives, if admitted, will in this Congress meet 
many warm friends from the Northern States. 

In the next Congress the coalition can hardly fail to be in a 
majority in the House, and to press so closely on our majority in 
the Senate that a few defections may destroy it. The loss of the 



THE NECESSITY OF UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE, ETC. 595 

next presidency is the natural sequel of the triumph of the Pres- 
ident's plan, and, if once lost, ■will any one name a day when there 
is a reasonable prospect of our regaining it ? The best we can 
hope for, therefore, under the President's policy, is, that the South- 
ern representatives will subordinate their passions to securing 
their interests in the Union by the coalition as of old. It is not 
likely the Democrats will repel their advances. 

It is possible that these people, so arrogant in rebellion, may 
be meek when in power over their enemies ; that they will pay 
our debt, pension our soldiers, vote indemnity to loyal citizens ; 
and vote against assuming their own debt, against pensioning 
their own wounded, against restoring their own officers to the 
army and navy, against compensation for their slaves, against an- 
nulling the confiscation acts or indemnity where the title can not 
be revoked ; and that the Democrats will aid them in passing 
their self-denying ordinances, but it seems to me not wise to as- 
sume it. It is safer to take their view of their interests as the 
measure of what they will attempt, and what they can do as the 
limit of what they will do. 

I do not fear a new rebellion now, but I will not shut my eyes 
to what men who have no interests but what are opposed to 
those who triumphed may do in power. Fifty-seven represent- 
atives and twenty-two senators are more than enough to arrest 
legislation in either House by tactics well known and often ap- 
plied, and not hitherto pushed to revolutionary extremes, because 
the constituencies had an interest in the government the repre- 
sentatives did not venture to disregard. But here revolutionary 
constituencies stand behind representatives struggling for their 
interests against their conquerors. They will not restrain their 
representatives, and if they persist, will not Democrats hasten to 
rescue the government by granting their demands ? If they fail 
in this, the life of nations is too fruitful of changes to justify us 
in excluding from our calculations contingencies where foreign 
war or civil discord may place the nation at the mercy of a hos- 
tile minority ; when a Buchanan may be President, and refuse 
to strike while they divide the nation without the fear of the 
sword ; or when a loyal President may rashly expel them from 
Congress, break the power of law by violence, and plunge us 
into the anarchy of civil war without a government recognized 
by all which alone carried us safely through the rebellion. 



596 THE NECESSITY OF UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE, ETC. 

Against all these dangers, the refusal to recognize loyal oligarch- 
ies or disloyal aristocracies, and the recognition only of govern- 
ments republican in form in the Southern States, arc the sufficient 
and only guarantee. The mass of the loyal negro vote breaks 
the unity of the hostile vote in every State, and will absolutely 
control it in many. 

In 1776 God gave us wise men who secured every point of 
victory possible. In this time of trial God has given us, for our 
sins, rulers who are not so wise, and the people grope toward 
their salvation and teach their rulers to secure it. By his bless- 
ing we arc intrusted with two thirds of both houses of Congress, 
and that is the absolute legislative power of the United States. 
What we think right toe can do. If the President deserts those 
who elected him for the votes and policy of their opponents, we 
must break the coalition at any cost. The President can have 
our support only by conforming his conduct to our principles. It 
is vain to argue, from the dangers of division, the necessity of 
submission to his will ; that will itself, if unchanged, works the 
ruin more surely than any division. It is itself the division, un- 
less w T e meanly sell a great cause for presidential patronage. 

But it is vain to deny that failure now is final for this genera- 
tion, for the people who want negro suffrage are in the North, and 
they who are to decide it are in the South, representing and vot- 
ing for the negroes in more than one fourth of all the States, with 
a negative on any amendment of the Constitution, and absolute 
power in each State. It is insane to dream that the South wifll 
of itself ever give cither suffrage or equality before the law, and 
now is our only time to compel it. 

If men say God works slowly, yet will not let a good cause fail, 
they had better enlighten their piety by a glance at his ways in 
history, and reflect that he visits wasted opportunities, not less 
than wickedness, with ruin. I trust we may not be monuments 
of that wrath. Very sincerely, your obedient servant, 

Henry "Winter Davis. 

Baltimore, October, 18C5. 



THE END. 



o 



